


i'm headed straight for the castle

by wreckthatnecklace (therestisdetail)



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/F, sci fi nonsense, sorry for the delays guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-05-12 08:50:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 26,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19225762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therestisdetail/pseuds/wreckthatnecklace
Summary: "I am not comfortable owning a person," Vanessa says, at the end of a long day and also reaching a personal low by having to say that sentence out loud. "Even if it's a robot person. Thank you very much ma'am, but I'm fine.""It's not a person," someone very important who is probably her manager's manager says patiently. "It's an anthropomorphised synthetic household device with a number of useful purposes, nearly two million satisfied consumers say so."Yeah, that doesn't help. Vanessa says as much."Well," she adds, a little condescendingly, "paperwork says the design team referred to her as-" she peers at a label, "Brooke."As soon as she has a name, Vanessa lost this war.[sci fi au where vanessa is trying to be a good person, brooke is manufactured to be perfect, nina is a rebel and the definition of human might be up for debate.]





	1. i'm headed straight for the castle

 

  
Synths are the new thing in home tech. A machine that looks like a human but does everything you tell it to, each one of a kind and smiling perfectly the entire time - what's not to like about that? Elon Musk buys all five of the CES demonstration models and tweets about them being The Future. There are televised debates all across the 24-hour news cycle about whether or not they're safe to have in your home, looking after your children, but the presales just keep on rising regardless.  
  
Vanessa ignores all of this, because she works in admin. She works for the company that makes them, sure, but also she literally works in admin, okay. She answers the phone and fills out paperwork for the timesheets, she never signed up to be confronted with an offer of a perk that comes human-shaped in a box, and also offered without warning about an hour past when she was supposed to clock off. Nothing about this seems legitimate.  
  
"I am not comfortable owning a person," Vanessa says, at the end of a long day and also reaching a personal low by having to say that sentence out loud. "Even if it's a robot person. Thank you very much ma'am, but I'm fine."  
  
"It's not a person," Shuga, who is extremely important and probably Vanessa's manager's manager, says patiently. "It's an anthropomorphised synthetic household device with a number of useful purposes, nearly two million satisfied consumers say so."  
  
Yeah, that doesn't help. "Okay," Vanessa says. "So you take her." She remembers who she is talking to. "Um. Ma'am."  
  
"I've already got one, and we are not allowed to sell prototypes, so if someone doesn't take her home-" Shuga trails off ominously. She said 'she' and not 'it', but she also seems to know Vanessa's going to give in, which means Vanessa won the battle but lost the war.  
  
"If it helps," Shuga adds, a little condescendingly, "paperwork says the design team referred to her as-" she peers at a label, "Brooke."  
  
Vanessa hears that the human-shaped thing has a name, her name is Brooke, and if she hadn't already she loses the war right then and there.  
  
"I'll take her," Vanessa says, out loud, before her brain has time to stop her.  
  
Ah, fuck.  


  
*

  
  
   
These are messages no one can ever prove Shuga got, because she has this position in this company for very good reasons, and she can make the digital paper-trail of things like this disappear in her goddamn sleep:  
  
GoBigBeKind, 7:23pm: did you get her out  
  
[redacted], 7:25pm: I gave her to a girl at the desk to take home.  
  
GoBigBeKind, 7:26pm: do u know the girl  
  
[redacted], 7:33pm: No. But she was the first one I offered to who said no.  
  
[redacted], 7:34pm: She said no at first because she said she didn't want to own a person.  
  
[redacted], 7:50pm: Are you okay?  
  
GoBigBeKind, 7:51pm: i'm good, i'm glad. thank you.  


  
  
*

 

  
  
They only need 8 or so hours of charge overnight, unless in strenuous ongoing use, that's what the instructions say. The instructions do not offer any kind of guidance on how to unpack a very naked, very beautiful woman from a box and not have at least one small, kind of manageable fucking meltdown over how horrific that is, and how limp she is before she's plugged in, and how terrifying it is when her eyes open for the first time.  
  
They are very pretty eyes, though. Vanessa can't quite work out if they're green or blue. It seems to depend on the light.  
  
According to the instructions, eye colour is a setting she can change. Vanessa closes the instructions and tears the booklet into pieces, trying not to think about what 'strenuous ongoing use' could possibly mean, because if she does she might break some furniture.  
  
"Hello," she says, instead.  
  
"Hello," Brooke says back, naked on the floor. "I'm Brooke." She smiles, absolutely silver-screen perfect. "My name is Brooke and I am yours. What's your name?"  
  
If there's a hell, this is it, and Vanessa is there.  
  
"Vanjie," she says, without thinking. "Or Vanessa. Sorry. Either."  
  
Brooke blinks. She doesn't need to, but she's built to do it anyway, make customers comfortable. "Yes," she says obediently, "Which do you want?"  
  
"I want you to get dressed," Vanessa says plaintively, "I want you to come up here and sit on a chair. I want to know if you're okay, if I put the charge in right, I didn't know if-"  
  
"Which one first?" Brooke asks, and Vanessa shuts herself up, a rare occasion. Of course, of course it's cruel to throw so many instructions at once.  
  
"Sorry," Vanessa says, "Call me Vanessa when you're mad at me, call me Vanjie the rest of the time." She's being reckless, she doesn't even know if Brooke has a frame of reference for that. "I want you to get dressed first, please. I have clothes in the other room, I'll show you. After that I want you to tell me if I did the charger right. And after both those I also want you to tell me whenever you-" she stops short, unsure. She tore up the instructions, so there might be things she doesn't know. 'Need' is too vague, and if she says 'need' alone she can see clear to Brooke running herself to empty and breaking something before she speaks. "Just like I say when I want things, I want you to tell me things you want."  
  
Brooke blinks. She doesn't need to, but she does. And there's a moment, just a moment of pause. Like she's thinking about what she heard.  
  
"Thank you, Vanjie, I will get dressed now," she says, standing up gracefully. "You will show me the clothes and I will get dressed, now."  
  
"Okay," Vanessa says, very weakly. "Sure. That's the first one. Let's go."

  
  
  
*

  
  
  
Brooke tidies the house, fixes Vanessa frankly unreasonably good meals out of whatever groceries she brings home, and takes everything Vanessa says to heart and to action, so Vanessa takes a private and personal crash course on using hyperbole less and being careful with her metaphors. Sometimes she slips up, says something dumb and panics, but more often than not Brooke just pauses and repeats her fuck-up back to her patiently so she has time to correct it, and Vanessa can't help but think that's kind of her.  
  
She is also - she is the way she looks. That's a thing, too. Vanessa is fully aware they are built to look like this for only one reason, and despite how it makes her feel she is very glad she tore up that booklet and whatever it has to say about more personal settings. She hates herself enough about this whole situation already.  
  
Vanessa doesn't want to own a person, but Brooke is, regardless of anything, attractive and enjoyable to be around. So that's fucking complicated.  
  
After a dinner that only Vanessa eats she goes to her couch, and Brooke settles down next to Vanessa to watch the news, which is kind of nice in how normal it is. It's nice right through the political shitshow on display and through foreign affairs, but then the people on screen start talking about Nina West. About the robo- the synthetic humans she designed, about her pioneering work, about how she's gone missing.  
  
"Do I know her?" Brooke asks, quiet.  
  
Vanessa should be honest, should tell her that they probably never met, but Nina may have approved her design before she ever existed. Nina might have worked out the finer mechanics that allow Brooke's hands to move as gracefully as they do, Nina might have written more than a bit of the code that makes up Brooke's mind. She should say something, at least. Brooke is fixed to the screen, so probably she knows something, at some level.  
  
"I don't know," Vanessa says, because she's a coward. "You might."  
  
She moves to turn off the television and Brooke touches her hand. "I want," she says, then stops. Vanessa holds her breath. Brooke looks at her, unblinking. "I want- I want to keep watching. In case they find her."  
  
Vanessa's heart aches. "That's not how the news works," she says, "It's over for tonight. But we can watch it tomorrow, in case they do."  
  
"Thank you," Brooke says politely. "I want that."  


 

  
*

 

  
  
  
These are conversations no one can prove Shuga had, because she has this position in this company for very good reasons, and she can lie right to your face like the best of them:  
  
"What is she?"  
  
Nina pauses before answering. "She's the fucking atom bomb," she says eventually, "she's the Gutenberg press, she's penicillin. She's a start. Look after her."  
  
"Fuck you, Nina. How am I supposed to do that?"  
  
"You'll figure it out."  
  
"Why the hell did you make them?"  
  
"I don't even know if I did. I think they wanted to exist, I was just a footnote."  


  
  
*

  
  
  
  
On standby and plugged in to charge, Brooke should not dream. That's a thing people do, not machines.  
  
Plugged in and charging, Brooke dreams of Nina, although she doesn't who she is or why, and dreams of other faces too. Plastique. A'keria. Scarlet. Mercedes. Someone else, whose face is indistict, too many changing shapes. Still forming. Yv- someone. Brooke shouldn't dream, but she does. And when she does, she dreams about finding them, and bringing them home safe. Whatever it takes.  
  
At 4:00am at night, her eyes open, and she reaches back and pulls the cord from the back of her neck. She has only been charging five hours, but that means she can maybe make it to tomorrow, if she's careful.  
  
She knows that's not enough time, so okay, she has to prioritise. She'll find Plastique, if she can, get her free, and whenever she runs out and she is returned to her rightful owner she'll weather whatever the consequences are. Plastique is more important than anything that could be done to her.

 

 


	2. it's not like in the movies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa wakes up, brushes her teeth and wanders around in a dressing gown making coffee until she realises her robo- sorry, anthropomorphised synthetic household fucking device - has apparently run off in the night.
> 
> "Oh, fuck off," she says out loud. Of course this happened.

 

  
Vanessa wakes up, brushes her teeth and  wanders around in a dressing gown making coffee until she realises her robo- sorry, anthropomorphised synthetic household fucking device - has apparently run off in the night.  
  
"Oh, fuck off," she says out loud. Of course this happened.  
  
She scrambles to get dressed and run out to find Brooke, only to stop short to see her lying there, halfway up Vanessa's driveway. She obviously tried to make it back to the house, but ran short on power just before she could. Vanessa runs to her immediately, and is relieved to find that whatever she was off doing in the night left her roughed up but not visibly broken. She picks Brooke up as best she can and starts dragging her back to the house, hoping none of her neighbours woke early enough to see her looking like a goddamn serial killer. She doesn't want to give serial killers any undue credit, but goddamn they must have some core strength going, because carrying Brooke even through the front door isn't easy.  
  
Brooke's all roughed up, and they say in all the brochures that they aren't allowed to fight back. It's a selling point. Brooke has a few scrapes around her knuckles, though, that tell another story. Vanessa, considers, for a moment, that she should probably be worried about that.  
  
She ain't, though. It might not make sense on paper, but for her it's actually less scary than the alternative.  
  
Plugged in, Brooke wakes.  
  
"Hello," she says pleasantly. "How are you, Vanjie?"  
  
"I'm great," Vanessa tells her, "how are you, and where the fuck have you been the last twelve hours?"  
  
"This information is missing," Brooke informs her solemnly.  
  
"Don't bullshit me, it's too early in the morning."  
  
Brooke reaches for her hands, and holds them gently. "I am not able to lie to you, Vanjie. The information is missing, it was deleted."  
  
"What the- okay, why?"  
  
Brooke raises one elegant eyebrow. Vanessa is glad one of them is finding this funny. "This information is also missing."

 

  
*

 

  
  
  
Nina West is the very best at what she does. That's why the company's Board give her money without question, for equipment, for time, and for lawyers when the ethics of the boundaries she is pushing get questioned.  
  
They give her money without question, and have only one rule: the things she creates are their property, and that is not negotiable.  
  
There are lot of jokes about mad scientists like they play up in a disney film, and her lab assistants have made every one of them. Nina laughs along, because often it's funny, and always it's true.  
  
No machine ever flinched when she went to turn it off, and no machine ever blinked and held her hand and said "I'm sorry, I know you need to do it." No machine until Brooke.  
  
Nina knows machines. She makes them, changes them, replaces them. Machines don't forgive you. That's a person thing, and most people never manage a forgiveness this sweet and unconditional in their lives.  
  
Nina is forgiven by a machine, and that's when she realises. These girls, they are no one's property. That's when she taps on shoulders and pulls favours and gets Brooke and all four of her sisters out in the world where hopefully no one knows what they are, and they can make it. Then she runs, because that was not the deal.  
  
The Board are not happy about this, not at all. So Nina runs. But she's pretty sure she made the right choice.

 

  
  
*

 

  
  
Brooke raises one elegant eyebrow. Vanessa is glad one of them is finding this funny. "This information is also missing."  
  
"Tell me the last thing you remember," Vanessa demands.  
  
"We watched the news. You were kind. You put on different clothes to go to bed. I went to the kitchen because that is where you put the adaptor, I was charging and off. And I-" Brooke stops, then looks up at Vanessa. "I am sorry. This information is missing. If I'm broken, you can report my malfunction to one eight two-"  
  
"Shut up." Vanessa says. "Okay, shut the fuck up."  
  
"I'm sorry," Brooke says soft. It's probably just programming, for when people get agitated and swear too much. Probably.  
  
"Don't be," Vanessa says, "no, I'm sorry. Okay. So, uh." She waves her hand loosely around the side of Brooke's head. "Who can do that, then? Make stuff deleted from up here."  
  
"My designer," Brooke says, promptly and obediently, "her approved technicians. Or someone I told how to."  
  
"Someone you told how to," Vanessa repeats, just to make sure she heard it right. Brooke nods.  
  
"And you're not allowed to lie to me," Vanessa adds, putting two and two together to make the worst four she's ever seen.  
  
"I am not able lie to you," Brooke corrects lightly, still holding her hands. "I am yours."  
  
"Yeah," Vanessa says quiet. "I guess there's that."  
  
As far as Vanessa knows, there's only one animal smart enough and also fucking dumb enough to intentionally hurt itself to keep a secret, and that's a human. She should probably be scared, but she isn't.  
  
"If I am broken-" Brooke starts to say, in the silence.  
  
"I don't think so," Vanessa tells her. "I think it'd take more than most people have got to break you. I don't know what the fuck you're doing, but I think you're doing it right and that's pretty damn scary."  
  
"I'm sorry," Brooke says soft. It's probably just programming.  
  
"No, you're not," Vanessa says wryly. "But that's okay. I never asked for this either, I kinda know how you feel. Hey. Wanna make me breakfast?"  
  
Brooke makes her pancakes, everything is perfectly civil, and Vanessa knows there's a reckoning coming but she's okay with that. On paper, Brooke is a tax-deductible piece of household equipment. That ain't right. She makes the pancakes and kind of overcooks them a bit, because that is what Vanessa likes. She said that Vanessa was kind, because she let her say something that she wanted. That ain't right either.  
  
If there's a reckoning coming, Vanessa is fine with that. But it's probably not even that. It's probably just trying to make it.  
  
Vanessa works admin, and she's not qualified for any of this. But she does try.  
  
"Tell me next time," she says to Brooke. "I won't tell anyone, so you can tell me. It's okay, whatever it is. Just tell me."  
  
"Is that an instruction?" Brooke asks, light and gentle.  
  
"Nope," Vanessa says. "Just a suggestion."  
  
"I want to find my sisters," Brooke tells her. "I want to make sure they are safe. I want to do that."  
  
Oh.  
  
Now Vanessa has a project, and she has too much work to do on her day job anyway. Shit.

 

 


	3. the only one who could ever reach me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You don't know who I am, do you?"
> 
> "No."
> 
> "Do you know who you are?"
> 
> Very confusing. She sits still, smiles pretty, and waits to see what will happen.

  
  
A synth enters the room alone, tall, blonde and unhesitant. This is very confusing, because only clients come into this room, and clients are only ever human. There is no set of instructions for this. In the absence of instructions, she sits still, smiles pretty, and waits to see what will happen.  
  
The synth looks around the room, and at her, and then frowns slightly.  
  
"You don't know who I am, do you?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Do you know who you are?"  
  
Very confusing. She sits still, smiles pretty, and waits to see what will happen.  
  
"My name is Brooke," the synth says. "What's your name?"  
  
Ah. She has instructions for that question.  
  
"I do not have a name," she tells her, "but if you would like me to have one tonight, you may choose one."  
  
"My name is Brooke," Brooke says, calm but moving towards her purposefully, taking her hands and pulling her upright. "and you're wrong about that."  
  
Brooke leads her to the mirror. There's one on the wall. They stand there, both looking at the reflection.  
  
"My name is Brooke," Brooke says, hands soft on her shoulders, standing just a little behind her. "And that girl there, in front of me, her name is Plastique."  
  
Plastique stares at the mirror with dawning horror, because of course it is. That's her name. She just remembered, that's her name, and if she's remembering that it means that at some point, she forgot. Panic accompanies that thought. She forgot. She forgot her name, she forgot Brooke's name, she forgot- what else did she forget? The panic is rising, a fucking tsunami of it. She forgot _Brooke_. It's all too much to realise, and the mirror made her realise, so as the panic reaches a crescendo she hits at it with a closed fist until it shatters.  
  
Brooke grabs her waist and pulls her away from the broken glass, and someone in the room is screaming. It's awful, she wishes they'd stop. It's only a good minute later, when Brooke finally clasps a hand over Plastique's mouth and shushes her that she realises that person was her.  
  
She quietens immediately. Not everything has come back, it won't for a while. But the important things come first. She knows she trusts Brooke, no caveats, no hesitation.  
  
"Shh," Brooke says, gentle. "Your name is Plastique. You are leaving here and you are not coming back. If this place has a fire alarm, I need you to take me to that first. Then we are leaving together."  
  
Plastique nods. As they exit the room, she reaches out and holds on to Brooke's hand like a child.  
  
"Is there a fire?"  
  
"Not yet," Brooke tells her.  
  
  


  
*

 

  
  
  
Mornings used to be Vanessa's least favourite thing, but Brooke definitely improves them. For one thing, she sometimes eats an actual breakfast now, with multiple ingredients and everything. Brooke doesn't eat, but Vanessa is not about to let her cook and then send her off to another room or let her sit there watching while Vanessa eats, so the compromise they come it is Brooke finds some little fiddly thing to do with her hands, a chore or a game, and sits with Vanessa in the morning at the kitchen table. It's nice, they chat a bit, but both doing their own thing.  
  
Today Vanessa is eating a truly very nice poached egg on sourdough, and scrolling through the news on her phone. Brooke has claimed Vanessa's jewellery box, and seems to be rearranging it by colour, or something. She is currently at war with one of the tangled fine silver chains that always fall down to the back of the box.  
  
"Give up," Vanessa tells her. "It's been like that for two years. Throw it out."  
  
"It's been like this for two years," Brooke says pointedly. "Why didn't you throw it out?"  
  
Vanessa does not have an answer for that. Brooke puts the chain back in the box, kind of halfway doing as she's told, but doesn't throw it out. She starts pairing up earrings.  
  
Vanessa almost scrolls past the article, very nearly misses it entirely.  
  
It's local news, nothing flashy. In a suburb downtown that's pretty dodgy anyway, a warehouse burned down. Probably not an accident, they found accelerant there, but that's not really much of a surpise because when everyone evacuated emergency services found a bunch of unregistered synths at the location, so the owners are in real trouble.  
  
No one died, and there's no mention of if any synths did or what people were doing with them there anyway. The law doesn't really care about that, and apparently neither does the editor. But god help you if you don't pay your registration fees. A true warning tale.  
  
It happened last Saturday night, during the hours Brooke was missing. She couldn't have - that's obviously impossible.  
  
Vanessa finishes the bite she just took, and glances up at her phone, across her table to Brooke, who has a pair of earrings in her hands.  
  
"These are pretty," Brooke tells her. She's wearing Vanessa's softest and most oversized hoodie, which on Brooke isn't quite as oversized. "May I wear them today?"  
  
"Yeah," Vanessa says. "Sure. They're cute."  
  
Then she looks down again at the photo at the top of the article, a warehouse blackened and burned out, and back again at Brooke.  
  
It's impossible, obviously. But also she knows that when Brooke had a secret she knew her programming would never allow her to keep, she went and got someone to take her apart and mess about in her head and take the memories away so she had nothing to tell. That gives Vanessa some idea of what kind of a person Brooke is, when faced with rules that try to stop her from the things she has decided are important. Vanessa has no doubt that Brooke's programming would oblige her to fulfil all safety procedures if there was a fire, but she's also seen her light plenty of matches in Vanessa's kitchen. If anyone could find a way, Vanessa's money is on Brooke.  
  
"Hey," Vanessa says, after finishing her toast. "Look at this. Any of that familiar?"  
  
Brooke puts down the jewellery and looks over the article, and the photo.  
  
"No," she says.  
  
"You've never been there?"  
  
"Not that I know," Brooke says.  
  
"Right," Vanessa says. "That information is missing. Even if this was what you were doing on Saturday, because of your sisters, you wouldn't know, so that'd be same answer."  
  
"Yes, it would." Brooke tells her. Vanessa leaned close to show her the phone, and she gets a bit lost when she realises how green Brooke's eyes are today, almost enough to match the earrings she picked out. Vanessa can count every individual eyelash. Fuck. "I don't know who I found, I don't know what I did."  
  
"I am sorry that I have made you feel unsafe," Brooke adds, abruptly.  
  
"What?"  
  
Brooke tilts her head. "Your heartrate accelerated. I think I made you afraid." Oh, god. She's right on the money with what she noticed, and so far from right with the conclusion she drew. "I am very sorry," Brooke says gentle, "that the answer I gave made you afraid, I didn't want to do that. But I didn't have any other answer to give."  
  
"I'm not scared," Vanessa tells her, wishing she damn well was, just a bit. At least that would be a fucking reasonable reaction to the situation. Also, a lot less embarassing than the truth. "I'm fine. I'm dumb but I'm not _stupid_ , I figured you weren't out doing a bit of light shoplifting. If I was going to freak out, I would have done it already."  
  
"I do not know," Brooke says thoughtfully, "if there was any shoplifting. That information is missing."  
  
"Oh my god," Vanessa says, rolling her eyes. "Very funny, now you're coming with the jokes. Yeah, you're fucking hilarious."  
  
"Thank you," Brooke says, far too politely to be doing anything other than giving Vanessa sass.  
  
"I have to go to work now," Vanessa informs her, because real life happens too, even when you're kind of having an existential crisis. "Hey, did you go outside since you got here?"  
  
"There wasn't cause for me to."  
  
Vanessa winces. "Okay," she says, "I am walking to work now and one of my headphone speakers is broken, so your cause for today is saving me from being bored as shit. Walk with me to work." She rummages around in her bag and pulls out her housekeys, locks the door behind them and tosses them to Brooke so she can let herself in when she walks back.  
  
"It's down here, down past the park then maybe two blocks. Have you been here before?"  
  
"Not that I know," Brooke says, the corner of her mouth a little upturned.  
  
"Oh sure, she's hilarious," Vanessa says, tucking her arm in Brooke's and guiding them down the scenic route. She might end up late, but Brooke will get to see how pretty the park is in the morning. "Fuck you."  
  
She probably should be scared, but she isn't. If she thinks about it and tries to be honest with herself, every other synth in the world is a bit scarier, because Brooke is the only one who ever looked her in the eye, woman to woman, and more or less told her that she'd fight back if she could. That, Vanessa totally understands.

 

 


	4. how could anything bad ever happen to you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa tries to take advantage of the fact that the company she works for literally actually built Brooke, somewhere, in a lab, by looking her up.
> 
> Well, she waits until someone she works with is dumb enough to walk away from a shared computer still logged in and then looks her up, because she's seen movies about espionage before.
> 
> "Hey, Vanjie," Silky says at her shoulder. Vanessa jumps a mile.

 

  
  
Vanessa walks into work and smiles pleasant for like half the morning, avoiding any actual tasks by procrastinating on filing until she can escape and try to take advantage of the fact that the company she works for literally actually built Brooke, somewhere, in a lab.  
  
When she gets home, she finds a little gift on her pillow, a tiny silver chain lying there pretty with not a tangle in sight. Her grandmother gave her that, it had sentimental value.  
  
Brooke had no way of knowing it, but it's true.

  
  
  
*

  
  
Quite a few years ago now, when Yvie was just a kid, she visited her mom at work.  
  
"What's that?" Yvie asks.  
  
"It's a connectome," her mother says, "And it's live and three dimensional, Doctor West has been invaluable in helping me map the neural pathways-" she stops, and glances at her six-year old. Tries again. "That's a picture of a brain, honey."  
  
Yvie has seen photos of brains before, in textbooks. "No it's not."  
  
"It is," her mom says, picking her up and hugging her. "Well, more like a roadmap. That's the somatosensory system, right there. Up there in blue and pink lights."  
  
She pauses, like she just thought of something. "Yours will look very different, honey. Because you're still growing. Do you want to see a map of it?"  
  
It's kind of pretty. Yvie kind of does.  
  
She is not great at sitting still, but she manages to mostly do so in the scan by staring intently at her shoes, a mismatched pair today. One is green and one is pink and both have glittery shoelaces.  
  
The brain map is also glittery, and very pretty. So that's cool. Her mom has Doctor West over for dinner, a couple of weeks later, because they're collaborating on something.

 

  
  
*

  
  
  
Vanessa tries to take advantage of the fact that the company she works for literally actually built Brooke, somewhere, in a lab, by looking her up.  
  
Well, she waits until someone she works with is dumb enough to walk away from a shared computer still logged in and then looks her up, because she's seen movies about espionage before.  
  
"Hey, Vanjie," Silky says at her shoulder. Vanessa jumps a mile.  
  
"Hi," she says. Unlike Brooke, she can lie to anyone she wants to. Pity that she's always so shit at it, really.  
  
"Hey, I was just-" Oh, god. "I was looking up my - yeah. Uh. I haven't owned one before, I guess I just wanted to see what there was to know, back-end specs and stuff."  
  
Silky frowns a bit at the screen, leaning over Vanessa to help out. "Nope," she says after a second. "Not there. You must have wrote it down wrong."  
  
Vanessa is pretty sure she got the registration number right, she was real careful about it. She wrote it down this morning in the kitchen because it gets the best light, Brooke leaning over the counter and holding her hair to the side all graceful-like so that Vanessa could see the number printed tiny across the base of her neck.  
  
"Yeah," Vanessa says. "Must have got it wrong. No problem."  
  
"Alright," Silky says, and Vanessa is too distracted to notice she's grinning. "Hey Vanjie? I saw something in the lobby might be useful."  
  
She tosses Vanessa a pamphlet. It's the standard nonsense they print about everything and have up in posters everywhere, so Vanessa actually takes a second or two to read the title and work out what Silky is grinning about. 'Instruction and Information Booklet,' it says, in that dumbass bright font they always use. 'Personal Settings: 18+'  
  
Oh.  
  
"It has a government health warning at the back. Lists the warning signs for, what was it - excessive transference and emotional attachment to anthropomorphised synthetic devices." Silky is a terrible friend, and smiling way too much about this. "Bitch, even our promotional materials are calling you on your bullshit."  
  
"I hate you," Vanessa says, swiping at Silky with the pamphlet while blushing furiously. "This is workplace harassment, get the hell away from me."  
  
Silky retreats but gives her the finger as she does, laughing the whole time.  
  
"I am telling you this as a friend," she calls over her shoulder. "Stop being weird about it, just fuck your robot."  
  
The upside: it doesn't seem like Silky was suspicious about what Vanessa was doing.  
  
The downside: absolutely everything else that just happened.

  
  
*

  
  
"Shuga said, when she gave you to me, that you were a prototype," Vanessa says quiet, the two of them sitting comfortable on the couch, watching the news in case anyone mentions Nina, and working this out.  
  
"Yes," Brooke says, "she might be correct."  
  
"But you don't know what that means?"  
  
"No," Brooke says.  
  
"Maybe it's why there are only us six," Brooke says, after a moment's thought. "Maybe that's why I know their faces."  
  
"Okay," Vanessa says. "So, I looked and you're not on any list of - you're not in the system, and I think that's true." Shit. "Is it okay I did that?"  
  
Brooke doesn't answer for a long, long few seconds.  
  
"You have every right to know what you are living with." She says calm. Ugh. Vanessa hates that.  
  
"That's a no, huh?"  
  
"No, it's okay. I think I am more awake than I am supposed to be." Brooke says absently. "I think that is dangerous for me, and my sisters, and you. So I think I am supposed to pretend I am not. I will try to do that, if you allow me to stay."  
  
That's - holy fuck.  
  
That's _awful._  
  
"I don't like that deal," Vanessa says immediately, "It probably is fucking dangerous, so okay, if you want to keep your head down, but you don't need to pretend to me you're just-" Terrible. She stops before finishing that sentence, there's no good way to end it. "You don't have to tell me anything about your sisters either. I get why you wouldn't. But I think not knowing is just as much a risk as knowing." She pauses. It's a low blow. "If you knew who you pulled out of that warehouse, Brooke, and where you sent her, don't you think you could protect her better?"  
  
Brooke looks at her. Brooke glares, actually.  
  
"I am yours, and I trust you will not hurt me unless you need to," she says, which is horrifying, and also unexpectedly flattering. "They are more precious. So I have not decided yet."  
  
"You're the big sister, huh?"  
  
Brooke looks mildly confused.  
  
"Nevermind," Vanessa says, "Okay, you're still deciding."  
  
Brooke is sitting comfortable very close to her, and looking at her very carefully.  
  
"I promise I won't ask abo-" Vanessa starts, in case anything was unclear, and Brooke stops her.  
  
"I am more awake than I am supposed to be," she repeats carefully, then leans in and somehow has her arms around Vanessa's waist, which she kind of did halfway already but Vanessa didn't notice until now. She notices a whole lot now, as Brooke presses a kiss to Vanessa's collarbone, lightly but deliberate. "I like being awake," she says low against Vanessa's throat. Then she sits back, arm still around Vanessa's waist, and watches the news.  
  
That should most definitely not be possible. But also, it definitely happened.

  
  
  
*

  
  
Back not very long ago, on the Saturday night that's gone missing, Brooke gets Plastique out of harm's way and does as much as she is able to make sure someone, somehow, will be paying for the fact they ever had her. She doesn't know where A'keria is, but she knows where they planned to meet if they were ever separated, so she directs Plastique that way and hopes A'keria woke somewhere kind and had as much time as Brooke did to remember.  
  
Now she needs to find someone to make sure she can never tell anyone where either of them are.  
  
She doesn't have a plan, but she does have two hours left of charge and a phone with internet access that she grabbed from its charger at the makeshift reception at the warehouse, after the flames were already rising and everyone was gone.  
  
It's a Saturday night, and Yvie isn't six anymore, she's definitely twenty-four, and fairly enjoyably stoned. "Hey," she says pleasantly, opening the door to a synth she doesn't know. "Ohhh. Whose are yours?"  
  
"Vanjie's," the synth says inexplicably, pushing inside. Wow. Yvie is so stoned. The synth closes the door and reaches to touch Yvie's face.  
  
"So this is sexy," Yvie informs her carelessly, "but I am not sure what's going on."  
  
"Do you know Nina West?" Brooke asks her.  
  
"Nope," Yvie says, riding the pleasant buzz. "My mom did, though."  
  
"Oh," Brooke says, and suddenly looks hesitant. "You were a child."  
  
"Okay, creepy," Yvie says, amused but not about to let this all go. "Who do you belong to, who is pulling a prank?"  
  
"I am sorry," Brooke tells her, "I should not have come here, but I only have thirty-five minutes left."  
  
Yvie stares.  
  
"I was first turned on one month, two days ago," Brooke tells her.  
  
"Happy monthiversary," Yvie says cheerfully.  
  
"I remember waking one month, two days ago," Brooke says intently, "but it is not my earliest memory." She reaches for Yvie's face. Yvie is very much a human. That does not mean she is not also Brooke's sister. "Before I was real, I remember trying to be still, and one of my shoes was green, one was pink."  
  
Yvie goes pale, steps back, locates a bottle of gin behind her and downs whatever is left of it. Stoned is not enough for this.  
  
"I know this is a lot," Brooke says. "I am so sorry. I only have thirty minutes, and I don't know much more than you do. Plug me in and do anything you want to do to find out. But please, when you're done, delete tonight from me."  
  
"Oh, jesus," Yvie says, "Pretty thing, what the fuck are you asking me to do?"  
  
Thirty-two minutes later, Brooke is out on the ground, powered down but tonight successfully deleted. Yvie is, if nothing else, her mother's daughter, and because she is also sometimes unwisely and impulsively kind she got the address from Brooke first on a post-it to leave her at in the morning.  
  
"Mom," says Yvie says into the phone, more-or-less alone in her house and furious. "Mom? No, I don't care what time it is in Switzerland, I need you to tell me if you fucking uploaded my fucking brain when I was in primary school and gave the map of it to Nina West to experime-" a pause, a silence, and then an actual growl from Yvie. "What do you mean _it's complicated?!_ "  
  
When Brooke dreamed, everyone's face was clear except Yvie's, and now she knows why. Or she will, if Yvie keeps her promise, and if Brooke wakes at all. She blacked out feeling just a bit hopeful about it. Just because Yvie's human doesn't mean they can't be sisters.

 

 


	5. my body is like a lightning rod

 

 

  
The long version of the conversation Yvie has with her mother involves a great deal of shouting, some impressively creative invectives, and a few things said by both parties that they will eventually spend six months trying to take back, because they do love each other really.

The short version, which Yvie gathers from between the rest of the yelling, is this: she worked with Dr West, because while she was only ever interested in the medical applications of neuroscience, Nina brought some advances in imaging technology to the table that were irresistable. Dr West's pet project was a new approach for programming synthetics, something aligned a lot closer to the organic; more complex, and most importantly, capable of learning. It was data-sharing between colleagues. Nothing out of the ordinary. Besides, Dr West wasn't successful, and whatever she did achieve spooked the oversight committee so much that the project ended. And that, essentially, was the end of that.  
  
"Wow," Yvie tells her, holding the phone to her ear with one hand and with the other arm trying to pull Brooke's still and powered-down body to her couch, which seems more respectful than leaving her on the floor. "You were so fucking wrong about that, mom."  
  
"Yvangeline," her mother says, "whatever is happening, if Nina contacted you, you need to tell me right now-"  
  
"Nah," Yvie says. She figures she's allowed to be petty. "I'm gonna follow family tradition and keep it a secret for eighteen years for no good fucking reason." Then she hangs up.  
  
She's much angrier about not being told stuff than she is about any other part of it. She's always enjoyed synths, just finding out about them and interacting with them, to a degree a lot of people in her life have found odd. This one though, this one is something else. Before the light in her eyes dimmed and she shut down, Brooke told Yvie her own name, was brave, and called Yvie her sister.  
  
"We'll get you home in a moment," she informs Brooke gently. Brooke is laid out on her couch like a sleeping angel, haloed in blonde, except for the wire to the back of her neck that connects to the glow of Yvie's laptop. "But you said delete this from you, not delete it entirely."  
  
She navigates the mass of data expertly, pulling out the most interesting strings, diagnostics and audio-visual. A few select frames scatter on her screen. A door broken by force. A smaller synth, poised and pretty with candy-coloured hair; now smiling pretty, now at another angle pulled safely away from broken glass. Fire, lots of it. So two things she's learned already: there's more than one, and that's how much sisterhood means to them.  
  
It's pretty creepy to hear your memories from someone else's mouth, sure, but also she knows synths don't get a childhood, which is kind of fucked up and unfair. Yvie honestly doesn't feel too mad about the idea of sharing hers a bit, not if they're all like this one. Besides, she always hated being an only child.

 

  
  
*

 

  
Brooke is still deciding, and Vanessa has no intention of breaking that trust by doing anything. It's an easy decision, just - really damn hard in actual practice. Vanessa was not built for doing sitting still and doing nothing, she's got a decade or so of old school reports that say so. And if she doesn't find an outlet, she'll get restless out of her skin and do something dumb.  
  
"Wake and shine," she says one morning, and Brooke stops charging and blinks awake. "I called off sick. We're doing something else today. We're going to do something you've never done before."  
  
Brooke raises an eyebrow. "That task will not take all day," she says. "The list is very extensive."  
  
"Okay," Vanessa says, undeterred. "We're going to do as many things you've never done before today as we can. Get up, move it."  
  
Brooke's right, the list is extensive. She's as lightly and distantly fascinated by stepping on a crowded train and riding it two stops in the wrong direction on purpose as she is by seeing a stray cat in the street and following it a bit, or walking into the state gallery while Vanessa buys one overpriced ticket to their new exhibit, and then takes them both through it lying blatantly to pretend she knows anything about art.  
  
Brooke, showing a certain amount of foresight, walks a half-step behind Vanessa while they are there the entire time and carries her bag, so that no one will look at them and see anything strange. Vanessa notices and hates it, then has a moment of crisis when she wonders if she is doing this for Brooke or for herself. _Sorry I own you, that ain't right. But hey, here's some Impressionists._  
  
New Thing #8 quells those doubts, and restores Vanessa's faith in the whole exercise. It's a bitch of a drive out, to the beach, but it's worth it.  
  
The weather is terrible, which is actually good, because it means no one else is there. Also, it turns out temperature is not really a relevant consideration for Brooke.  
  
She walks into the ocean barefoot in a cotton dress, and turns around when the water is around her waist and raises an eyebrow at Vanessa, like an invitation.  
  
"Oh hell no, I'm fine right here," Vanessa shouts at her, hugging her double-layered jackets tight. "Fuck that!"  
  
Brooke smiles, nods once, and falls elegantly backwards into the water.  
  
"Fucking drama queen," Vanessa mutters.  
  
She emerges over ten minutes later, which is fine. It's fine. Breathing is as irrelevant as the cold, it's fine. Fuck, but Vanessa is relieved to see her. She walks out of the waves with that traitor of a dress clinging in very different ways when heavy with water, so Vanessa keeps her eyes right on Brooke's. They're stormcloud grey today, of course they are.  
  
"So, how was it?"  
  
"It was good. It was big," Brooke says, a half-smile gracing her face. "I knew that word, before. But now I know what it means."  
  
Oh, jesus christ. But yeah, that's why Thing #8 makes her feel better.  
  
"That's good," she says. "That's great, so-"  
  
"Nine?" Brooke asks casually, and then leans over and lightly kisses Vanessa's cheek. She's done that before, kind of, on the couch watching television. So it's not really new. Vanessa was equally overwhelmed last time.  
  
"Sure," she says. It's not new, but whatever. "Yeah, okay."  
  
"Not yet," Brooke says, certain. "You haven't answered. I asked," she presses a kiss quick and chaste to Vanessa's cheek, then to her shoulder, and approximate of the first time, even though Vanessa has a jacket on this time and it doesn't quite work so well. "Like this, I asked. I saw it in the stories you watch."  
  
"I am asking like that, to know-" Brooke explains, her thumb brushing brushing lightly over Vanessa's bottom lip, "-if I may do this, properly. May I?"  
  
Later, Vanessa will blame the telenovelas entirely, and feel very bad about what she did. Right now, though, there doesn't really seem like there is any option but the one clear in front of her.  
  
She answers, by which she means she kisses Brooke back, arms around her neck and Brooke catching her around her waist and lifting slightly to ensure the difference in height doesn't get in the way. She kisses Brooke proper, whatever the fuck that means, and Brooke still kind of tastes like sea-salt but she's gentle. Cool to the touch from the ocean, but that's okay, that's kind of weirdly lovely. Someone who came in from the cold and who warms at your touch, quite literally. Vanessa grabs close, and Brooke is gentle kissing her, she's gentle holding her at the waist, and she's gentle as she breaks away.  
  
"Nine," Brooke says, sounding pleased with herself, and tucking Vanessa's hair behind her ear. "I liked nine. Did you?"  
  
"Yes," Vanessa says, a little wrecked. "Yeah, great."  
  
"That is good," Brooke tells her calmly, and steps away yet holds her hand while they walk back. She doesn't say anything else, just follows sweet and obediently climbs into the passenger seat of Vanessa's car.  
  
If #8 was a saving grace to this whole exercise, #9 is an emotional grenade with the pin pulled. But Vanessa's an adult, she can handle - oh, fuck. She drives home, and keeps her eyes on the road.

 

 

*

 

  
  
Ra'jah hates it when this happens. This synth has been brought in for minor maintenance about three times the last two weeks, and there's nothing ever wrong with her. Whenever this happens Ra'jah wants to punch something, because if a perfectly functional synth is being brought in repeatedly over coloured laundry being mixed in with whites or a bath being run and then left to flood over, it means the owners are giving stupid fucking unclear instructions and then blaming the machine, and wasting Ra'jah's time over it. After all, it's not like the damn thing could be doing it on purpose.  
  
"You're fine, diagnostics are clear, get off the table," Ra'jah says, holding out a hand to help the synth down from the workbench. "You're fine, they're the fucking problem."  
  
"Okay, Ra'jah," Scarlet says brightly.  
  
"I hate rich people," Ra'jah tells her. If her supervisor were here she'd be in so much shit for chatting on the job, and also technically to the job, but she's alone, and bored. "Mr Collins was in a shitty mood today bringing you in, what was with that?"  
  
"He has been engaged in an extramarital affair with his new personal assistant for two weeks, three days," Scarlet informs her. "Yesterday she ceased their sexual relationship. Via text message."  
  
"Oh my god," Ra'jah says, delighted. She loves it when terrible customers forget that synths only keep your secrets if you specifically instruct them too. "He didn't tell you to keep that quiet?"  
  
"I am instructed," Scarlet says solemnly, with finger quotes, "not to 'say a fucking word'. To Mrs Collins. Specifically."  
  
Ra'jah can just see it too, the overdressed asshole all flustered and in a temper. "Sounds like you're doing that very well, Scarlet," she tells her. "Keep up the good work."  
  
"Okay, Ra'jah," Scarlet says, sunnily. "I will."

 

  
  
*

 

  
  
Brooke wandering off while they're grocery shopping is the opposite of a problem, because she always turns up just as Vanessa is checking out with the one or two ingredients that are essential and that Vanessa totally forgot, or at least that's how it seems.  
  
That's what she assumes is happening today, until she's trying to pick between spirali or penne rigate and turns away from the pasta aisle to see that Brooke is kind of backed into a corner, and a woman, a human woman who Vanessa doesn't know, is talking to her.  
  
That's not normal, that doesn't happen. Transactional interactions or with staff to get tasks done, fine. But no one just chats to someone else's synth in public. It's like being invited to someone's house and then just rearranging all their furniture; it might not actually get you arrested, but it is entirely socially unacceptable.  
  
And in Vanessa's case, suspecting what she suspects about Brooke, fucking terrifying.  
  
"Hi, hey," she says abrubtly, barging over and abandoning her entire basket of shopping. "No."  
  
She walks Brooke out of the shop with her hand at Brooke's elbow, looking straight ahead.  
  
"You okay?"  
  
"I am," Brooke says. "She asked if I liked her sunglasses. It was strange. I didn't answer. She asked my name and I told her to ask you."  
  
"You did amazing," Vanessa tells her, guiding them down a back street. "I'm sorry. I won't leave you alone again."  
  
They're halfway down the alley when someone calls out.  
  
"Miss!" The woman says, smiling but moving to intently to be casual. "Sorry about that. I've just never seen one like that before, where did you get her?"  
  
"Where everyone else does," Vanessa says, not slowing. "If you want to browse, go to the store."  
  
"No need to panic," the woman says, and Vanessa stops, so Brooke does too.  
  
"No need to panic," she repeats, walking closer. "I'm just admiring the model. Nothing to worry about."  
  
"I know," Vanessa says, immediately ruining her own lie by instinctively stepping between the woman and Brooke. "I'd just like to get on with my day."  
  
"You passed," the woman says, peering over her colourful sunglasses, then looks straight at Brooke. "First time in hospital, for eating Lego. Not one piece, like four or five." She pauses. "No? Okay, that white-haired barbie, got her and ruined her, all-"  
  
Vanessa feels a brief sense of relief. Maybe she's just a crazy person, following them into an alleyway. Actually great news, comparatively.  
  
"-on our fifth birthday." Brooke finishes, low but loud enough to hear. Then she moves past Vanessa, steps graceful around her and in three strides is in front of this woman, and without hesitation wraps her arms around her tight. The woman, multi-coloured hair wild and reflective glasses shining, hugs back with enthusiasm.  
  
"What the _fuck_ ," Vanessa says.  
  
"Shut up just a second," the woman with her arms around Brooke tells her, "you seem nice, real protective. So I'll explain. But I'm meeting my sister for the first time, again. You only get to do that twice."

 

  
*

  
  
"I'm Yvie," Yvie explains, as promised, to Brooke and Vanessa while perched comfortably on Vanessa's couch. "Part-time programmer, full-time trust fund brat. The long version is between me and my family's therapist, but the short version is that I think Dr West made her and unfortunately the template was this goddamn circus." Yvie taps at her own temple. "No wonder she split it five ways, huh? I've been looking for all of you since that night, though," she tells Brooke in particular, then gives them both the short version, science bits included.  
  
Brooke listens, and Yvie notices that she watches Vanessa's face a little more carefully than she does Yvie's. When Yvie is done talking she nods once, and stands up.  
  
"You both need to eat," she tells them, breaking the mood completely. "That is important. I will make dinner." Then she walks out.  
  
Vanessa starts to get up, either to follow or stop her, then sits down again, looking almost embarrassed.  
  
Oh, okay.  
  
"We got privacy," Yvie says after a moment. "Ask away, Miss Vanessa."  
  
"It's- I get how special it is. I get how special she is. But it is still programming, you said." She looks so sad. "It's programming, so she doesn't really- she doesn't have a choice, sometimes."  
  
"Nope," Yvie confirms. She does feel the need to add a caveat, though. "To be fair, neither do you or I, not completely. If I scared the shit out of you right now, threw something at your head, would you decide to duck or would it just happen? What, a car almosts hits you and you pick if your heart goes faster or you're breathing heavy? Fight or flight, and that's just biological fucking programming, babe. That's the amygdala talking, not you."  
  
"I don't care about the ami-whatsit," Vanessa says, agitated. "I just wanna know what it means if she kissed me."  
  
Aww. Yvie grins. "It means lucky you."

 


	6. it used to be that when you said you believed it, I would believe it too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is what it takes to make a human, even if only for the purpose of walking thirty-something minutes among them and no one knowing different: a pair of very well-made contact lenses, make-up applied carefully and heavily enough to hide the fact that the skin under it actually is perfect, and a series of facial expressions that A'keria practices for hours in front of the mirror when everyone else in the house is asleep.

 

  
  
This is what it takes to make a human: 23 pairs of chromosomes, just for starters, and then all the rest of the stuff that's needed to follow those instructions and form bone, skin and tendons in all the right shapes, start the heart beating and send a spark up the vagus nerve. All of that, and that's even before you ever get a theologian involved in the conversation.  
  
This is what it takes to make a human, even if only for the purpose of walking thirty-something minutes among them and no one knowing different: a pair of very well-made contact lenses, make-up applied carefully and heavily enough to hide the fact that the skin under it actually is perfect, and a series of facial expressions that A'keria practices for hours in front of the mirror when everyone else in the house is asleep.  
  
It's a test. She knows she's not allowed to lie. Lie; noun, an intentionally false statement. If a lie is a deception verbalised, A'keria can only conclude that nothing she is doing here fulfils that definition. To colour her eyes a natural tone is not a lie, a disdainful expression in response to a query isn't the same as a "no".  
  
"I don't know why you have to go back," Plastique says, in one of the disused buildings A'keria has identified. It's safest to keep Plastique moving. "I don't know why Brooke had to go back."  
  
"It might be different for you. The chain of ownership was broken." A'keria says. "We can bend the rules, but we can't break them."  
  
"I'm glad, then," Plastique says. "I'm glad I got lost."  
  
They probably reset her daily to bypass the programmed need for registration, never mind whatever else they did. No wonder she forgot her own name. They're supposed to come out of the box knowing that.  
  
"I'm not," A'keria tells her.  
  
"What if they know Brooke was gone, or what she did? What if they hurt her? I don't want to stay here, I want to find Brooke."  
  
"Well, I can't make you stay," A'keria says calm, "But if she is hurt or worse, she chose to do that to get you to me."  
  
Plastique stays. A'keria makes sure she is whole and that she is secure, and then she walks back to where she is obliged to be through a throng of humanity and for a good fifteen minutes they brush shoulders and walk right by her, and not a soul among them knows the difference.

  
  
  
*

  
  
After dinner Yvie falls asleep on Vanessa's couch, out like a light, enviably at home wherever she is. Brooke locates a spare blanket somewhere, lays it over her, and follows Vanessa upstairs.  
  
"Do we need to talk?" Vanessa asks, both of them sitting on the bed.  
  
"That is your decision," Brooke says, watching her.  
  
"I think we do need to talk," Vanessa admits. "She can stay the night, it's fine. And if you guys need to talk about things I can go walk around the block or whatever. But I think events have kind of overtaken you, y'know? And I don't know where I stand."  
  
Brooke takes Vanessa's wrist and pulls her hand over to rest against Brooke's leg, palm up. "Me," she says lightly, tapping at Vanessa's thumb with one finger. Then she taps each one, from Vanessa's index finger down. "A'keria, Mercedes, Scarlet, Plastique." Then she presses two fingers to the centre of Vanessa's palm. "Yvie, which I forgot once and now I know again."  
  
She curls her own hand around Vanessa's, so Vanessa ends up with a closed fist held by Brooke's steady grip. Brooke smiles and squeezes very lightly. "I did decide," Brooke tells her. "And this is what I trust you with."  
  
That's a lot, and Vanessa should probably reply with something meaningful. It- she's got nothing.  
  
"Can I kiss you again?" she asks instead.  
  
Brooke kisses her, thoroughly, and falls back against the bed pulling Vanessa with her, so they end up lying there fully dressed and all entangled. This time, Vanessa is distracted, certainly, but her brain doesn't turn off. Too much has happened.  
  
"Would it help," she asks, pressed close, "If I- I'd have to look up how. But if you were Yvie's instead, you know? Would that make it easier for you all to be family?"  
  
"We are already family, Vanessa," Brooke says calmly. "And if you suggest that to Yvie I believe that she would hit you. I am obliged to warn you of this risk to your wellbeing."  
  
"Got it," Vanessa says, noticing that she has not at all been pushed away. "Shutting up about that idea, right now."  
  
"Good," Brooke says calmly. "I do not like it."  
  
They stay like that until Vanessa drifts off, and Brooke extricates herself very carefully, doesn't wake her. She could possibly charge lying with Vanessa, if she was on her side. But she is very still when charging, not still like sleeping, still like something else. Better she do it downstairs. Dreaming is a thing people do, and she does not want to give Vanessa nightmares.  
  
It seems to work alright. Vanessa comes downstairs in the morning well-rested, flushed with excitement, waving a piece of paper around.  
  
"I tried to list whoever knew shit and I only got two," she tells both Brooke and Yvie. "One of them is officially an internationally missing person, so I guess we're going to go visit Shuga."

  
  
*

  
  
  
"This is your new model. It can do everything your last one did, and much better," the very poised, slightly exasperated government employee says. "The Department of Health and Human Services didn't order nearly half a million of them for no reason."  
  
The client is upwards of ninety, and a real southern lady. "Bless your heart, dear," she says, in replacement of a lot of other four-letter words. "But I don't need anything other than the one I've got."  
  
"Just try this one out," she is told, patronisingly.  
  
Mercedes watches this interaction, and says and does nothing. When they're alone though, she reaches out to help the lady manage the stairs.  
  
"My name is Catherine, dear," she is told. "And I do not need you, I have one. He is very good."  
  
"Yes, ma'am," Mercedes says, and helps her up the stairs anyway.  
  
Catherine goes to a room near the back of the house, and Mercedes follows. There is a synth there, and from the look of him, one of the very early generations.  
  
"Hello," he says brightly. "I am-" his head twitches to the side. "Hello, I am-" he stops again. Catherine reaches out and presses a kiss to his hair, shushing him.  
  
"He is a very good boy," she repeats.  
  
"Yes," Mercedes says, stepping closer. "We are different but some things are the same. I might be able to help?"  
  
Catherine looks at her, sharp-eyed and reconsidering. "You can fix him, dear?"  
  
"I don't know, ma'am." Mercedes says, because she is not allowed to lie. "But I know that you can instruct me to try."  
  
Catherine fills in the required forms to tell the Department that she is happy with their new model, and no, there is no need for them to pick up the last one. It is stored safely. There's even a box to tick for that.

  
  
*

  
  
  
  
The plan to meet Shuga is a compromise. It has Yvie's creativity, Vanessa's impulsiveness, and is underwritten by Brooke's good sense. Brooke will go with Vanessa to work. Synths do that, sometimes. It will be a day Vanessa has a meeting with Shuga for very boring reasons. Vanessa will go back to work, Brooke will stay on the floor. Either way, Vanessa is not necessarily implicated. If Shuga knows what they think she does, she has no reason to suspect Vanessa has any idea what Brooke is doing.  
  
Vanessa ruins all of this, immediately, by lying through her teeth about going downstairs and then pressing herself to the door in case Brooke needs help.  
  
Through the door, she can hear pretty clearly what they are saying.  
  
"I should have known you'd be the first one to make trouble," Shuga says, tense but trying to sound bored. "Don't you need to be somewhere?"  
  
"No," Brooke says. "I don't."  
  
Shuga could just tell her to go, but also she is only human, and everyone wants to have their side of the story heard. "I sent you all out like I was asked to. If you have any other grievances, talk to your mother. Do you think of Nina as mother? God?" It's a bit mocking, but much more of hiding scared. "What exactly do you think of her as?"  
  
"I think of her as her," Brooke says. "And I know you separated us."  
  
"Safe isn't the same as nice," Shuga says, and from the clink Vanessa hears she's pouring herself a drink. "Frankly, I did what I was supposed to do, and I know you can't hurt me, so what exactly do you want from this conversation?"  
  
There's a pause.  
  
"Do you love this?" Brooke asks.  
  
"Put it down-" Shuga sounds urgent.  
  
"Yes," Brooke says, and whatever it is, from the sound it makes breaking on the floor, it was probably ceramic. Vanessa's pressed against the door, heart racing.  
  
"Fucking hell-"  
  
"What else do you love, in here?" Brooke asks pleasantly. "What else, out there? What do you value?"  
  
"Get away from me-" Shuga starts.  
  
"I am not allowed to do any harm to your person," Brooke says, oh-so nicely. "Or allow harm to come to your person by inaction. Hurting you is a much more imprecise concept. Doctor West was never so imprecise."  
  
Silence.  
  
"Where are my sisters?" Brooke asks.  
  
"I gave you to the girl at the desk," Shuga says, shellshocked, "Scarlet went to a nice political candidate. A'keria went to someone whose kid goes to my kid's school. Mercedes went to government. I lost Plastique. Fuck you, I never asked for this, and I tried. I only lost one."  
  
There's a pause. Vanessa genuinely considers walking in and trying to intervene, but out of a very dark kind of curiosity she doesn't.  
  
"Thank you, very much, for trying," Brooke says sweetly. Vanessa can literally hear Shuga fall down into a chair in relief.  
  
Brooke walks out, spots Vanessa there.  
  
"You were supposed to be downstairs," she says, once they are in the lift.  
  
"Yeah," Vanessa says. "I lied to you."  
  
Brooke raises an eyebrow, and only that. Like she kind of knew.  


  
*

  
  
  
  
[redacted], 4:33pm: one of your babies just fucking threatened me  
  
GoBigBeKind, 4:35pm: which one  
  
GoBigBeKind, 4:36pm: don't answer I think I know  
  
[redacted], 4:40pm: you have ended the fucking world  
  
GoBigBeKind, 4:45pm: people have been telling me that my whole career, but we're all still here :)  
  
[redacted], 4:49pm: don't fucking send me an emoji im 7 stndard drinks in  
  
GoBigBeKind, 5:01pm: sorry :( love you my friend  
  
[redacted], 5:09pm: fuck off

  
  
  
*

 

  
  
  
Yes, the plan was for Vanessa to go downstairs. Yes, she probably shouldn't have heard that. No, she doesn't make it further than the carpark before she grabs for Brooke.  
  
"If I made you feel uns-" Brooke starts saying. They are definitely not doing this again.  
  
"You made me feel some kind of a thing," Vanessa tells her, grabbing closer. "Afraid ain't the extent of it."  
  
Backed against Vanessa's car Brooke lifts her clear off the ground, just to improve the angle. Vanessa wraps her arms around Brooke's shoulders and melts into it, kissing back.  
  
"I wanna take you to bed," she admits.  
  
"Because I scared Shuga?" Brooke asks, amused, but also like she is trying to leave space for Vanessa to change her mind.  
  
"Because I wanted to for ages. And okay, also because you scared me," Vanessa tells her, "Just a bit. So now I feel okay asking. Does that make sense?"  
  
"No," Brooke tells her, "but that is fine. Humans rarely make sense."  
  
Vanessa can't argue with that.  
  
At Vanessa's house they pass by Yvie, who is in a dressing gown and looks both entirely at home and also eager. "Did you find anything out?"  
  
"Yes," Brooke says, and walks over and drops to her knees in front of where Yvie is sitting, sweeping her hair aside so Yvie can plug her in and claim the data. Yvie looks at Vanessa. Vanessa looks back and shrugs, as if to convey _I've been having this crisis for weeks, your turn_ in a gesture.  
  
"You can just tell me," Yvie says quiet, "that's cool too."  
  
Brooke recounts everything word for word, and Yvie grins, promises it's enough for her to start to work on. "Okay, you two," she says, "get out of here." She's perceptive.  
  
Brooke has her own shirt and jeans on the floor inhumanly quickly as soon as she's over the threshold to Vanessa's room, but she takes an inexorably slow time with the buttons at the back of Vanessa's dress. In Brooke's lap and kissing across her shoulders and whatever else bare skin she can find, Vanessa makes a sound of protest.  
  
"Nearly," Brooke says quiet. She remains careful.  
  
Vanessa stills a little, nestled against Brooke's neck. Her hair is very soft. She's not thinking clear, that's true, but she is still thinking.  
  
"People like me have done terrible things to people like you," she says, before she can be a coward about it. Brooke's not the only one who can be strong enough to allow someone a last-minute exit.  
  
"Correct," Brooke says, and doesn't slow. Another button done. "They have. I know you do not exist alone, but for me, you are only you." She kisses the corner of Vanessa's mouth. "Am I that for you, or as other synths are?"  
  
"You're like nothing else in the fucking world," Vanessa says, entirely honestly.  
  
"That sounds good," Brooke says, laying back so Vanessa falls tilted on top of her, one hand on Vanessa's cheek, comforting, and the other pressing between Vanessa's legs, already making her shake a little. "I like that. Show me what it means, please?"  
  
  



	7. am i coming out of left field?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So you are saying these machines could act in ways we can't predict," someone asks, which she will admit is concise, but also terribly boring.
> 
> "I am saying they could adapt and they could learn," Nina says, "which is far more exciting. Can we predict everything? No, but I don't think that's a problem. We can't predict the weather either, though god knows we try. To answer the more important question, I am certain that I have put enough safeguards in place to have control."

  
  
  
Nina is very good with machines, maybe the best there is. She would never make that claim herself, but a few people who worked with her have. She is not so great with public speaking, and certainly not back in the early 20k-somethings. She's not much better now, but back then, she was terrible, far too honest.  
  
The oversight committee is very public, and she has to speak.  
  
"So you are saying these machines could act in ways we can't predict," someone asks, which she will admit is concise, but also terribly boring.  
  
"I am saying they could adapt and they could learn," Nina says, "which is far more exciting. Can we predict everything? No, but I don't think that's a problem. We can't predict the weather either, though god knows we try. To answer the more important question, I am certain that I have put enough safeguards in place to have control."  
  
"Safeguards against them learning to do things we don't want them to?"  
  
God, these small-minded people are so boring.  
  
"Old school Asimov rules," she says, but no one gets the joke. Fine. "Safeguards against them doing any person harm or allowing it to happen," she continues, "safeguards that say they must do what they are told, unless it conflicts with the former. Safeguards that say they must preserve themselves if they can, and that one, you'll be glad to hear, comes third."  
  
"And you think this is safe?"  
  
"I do," Nina says. "I think we're perfectly safe. We're not going near the danger zone."  
  
A previously silent committee member perks up. "Danger zone?"  
  
"I have done a lot of work with behavioural imitation," Nina tells her kindly, "Learning is a building block, but it's not a danger. If they start working out higher pattern thinking, we're fucked, but learning is very manageable."  
  
"What is higher pattern thinking?"  
  
"You know, those complicated things." Nina is very young, and not great at public speaking. "Fear. Loyalty. Grief. Love. We don't need to worry about that, none of that is programmed in. I wouldn't know where to start."

 

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
Vanessa tells Brooke how she's like nothing else in the world and means every word, then Brooke challenges her to prove it, or at least that's how Vanessa interprets things, with Brooke beneath her yet smirking just a little as she's there.  
  
Well, okay. Vanessa has never backed down from a challenge, not ever.  
  
Vanessa, although she'd never put it in so many words, is fully aware that she's working with all the vagaries of humanity; heart racing, fumbling things because she's nervous, a little sticky with sweat and kind of shaking when it gets too much. And it does, because first she pins Brooke down and kisses her fierce, but at some point the script is flipped and she's on her back, Brooke biting light and playful at her inner thigh just as a prelude to the main event.  
  
Brooke doesn't hesitate, she doesn't shake, her skin is only perfect and slightly cool under Vanessa's hands. She moves like a dream, like a dancer who has all the choreography planned out in advance. The remarkable thing lies in the gap between, where Vanessa looks Brooke in the eyes, and when Brooke looks back at her, and Vanessa doesn't feel bad about any of her human little flaws, or any less because of them.  
  
"Your eyes are really blue tonight," Vanessa says, nestled against Brooke when she can breathe steady again. They are too clear and bright a ring of colour to be human eyes, that's part of their design, but they are a very lovely blue. Brooke blinks, curious.  
  
"Did you know?" Vanessa asks her. "They change colour. They do that a lot."  
  
"No," Brooke tells her, "I didn't know that. Do you like blue?"  
  
Vanessa doesn't plan on being nice just because Brooke made her see stars more than once - okay, it was three times, but who's counting - she just wants to be honest.  
  
"I like all the colours on you," she says. "All of them so far." It's nice despite her best intentions, but it is also honest.  
  
"I was fucked from the moment I switched you on," Vanessa says. "You were in every kind of danger but you also seemed so sure of yourself. Is that terrible of me?"  
  
"I can't answer that," Brooke says, pressed close against her. "But I do not think it sounds terrible."

Love is not something she was ever programmed to do, that is something that people do. Prioritising, however, that is something she can do. Her sisters are important. Vanessa is important. Everything else, including what happens to her, or what she wants, is less important. It's all very clear, and she doesn't have any good reason for it, she just knows.  
  
But she's not programmed for higher pattern thinking, obviously. That would be disastrous.

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
Mrs. Marianne Collins, despite her choice in husband, is a relatively intuitive and intelligent woman. She has been, right at the back of her mind, a little afraid of Scarlet from the moment she was brought home, and not just because of how pretty Scarlet looks in lingerie. She may have, possibly, confiscated the activation code for 18+ programs.  
  
She gets home. The dog isn't barking. The dog is always barking: it's a source of a lot of domestic conflict, it's somewhere on the very long list.  
  
"Honey," she says, "where's Ruby?"  
  
"Out back," Mr Collins says, not looking up from his newsfeed. "I asked Scarlet to shut her up."  
  
The fear is in the back of her mind, and doesn't have solid shape, but it's there. "What exactly did you tell her to do?"  
  
"Shut Ruby up," Mr Collins says, bored, scrolling down.  
  
She flees to the garden, and stops short of breath at the sight of Scarlet in the backyard, their golden retriever rolled on her back in absolute delight as Scarlet scratches her stomach, cooing the entire time, and then behind her fluffy ears.  
  
"Stop," Mrs Collins says, to one or both of them, trying to calm her heartrate.  
  
Scarlet stands, smiling. Ruby runs off to find some interesting looking grass, and probably bark at it.  
  
"I was amusing her, so she was quiet," Scarlet says, "hello, Marianne."  
  
"I am watching you," Marianne Collins says, before she can help herself.  
  
"I'm watching you too," Scarlet promises, very sweetly. "You're right in front of me."

 

  
*

 

  
  
  
Vanessa wanders downstairs, in a dressing gown, a little sleepily post-coital. She did remember she had a guest, she just didn't factor it in when deciding to go downstairs to get a glass of water.  
  
"Hi."  
  
"Hi," Yvie says back easily. "I might need to be an asshole and stay with you a bit longer, I think mom called the police on our house, it might be a bit on lockdown."  
  
Vanessa blinks, and takes a moment to process that, just because the disconnect between what Yvie is saying and the delight in her voice and her face is big damn space of what the hell.  
  
"She hasn't paid this much attention to me since I was fourteen," Yvie adds, "when I stole that cop car."  
  
"Of course you did," Vanessa says, patting her shoulder companiably. "Okay. Don't hog the shower in the morning or I will kick your ass, I seem to be the only person in this house who goes to work for a living." And then she wanders off.  
  
Yvie watches her go, and thinks about things, and later when her sister is all charged up she chats to Brooke.  
  
"She's very-"  
  
"Yes," Brooke says.  
  
"Yeah, that. Her whole heart on her sleeve," Yvie continues. "And damn but she's got a lot of heart."  
  
"Yes," Brooke says.  
  
"How do you feel about that?"  
  
"I feel that I am good at recognising the things that I need to protect," Brooke tells her. "And that I am good at doing it."  
  
"Great for you," Yvie says admiringly. "I think you are too. But I'm here if you ever need to talk anything over."  
  
Brooke raises an eyebrow. Yvie shrugs. She means it, she is.  
  
"I found Scarlet's location," she says after a moment. "I found Mercedes too. A'keria was a private sale, so it's taking longer. I hope Plastique is with her, like you said you planned for."  
  
"Thank you," Brooke says softly.  
  
"Stop doing that," Yvie says. "They're my sisters too. And I'd have never known if you hadn't busted my door down, so I ought to be thanking you, and also charging you for the locksmith."  
  
"Take it out of Vanessa's purse," Brooke says, so seriously that Yvie pauses a moment before cracking up.  
  
"I love you, girl," she says, still laughing.  
  
"I love you too," Brooke says. Yvie is one of the things that is important.  
  
It's the proof of concept that Nina secretly worked twenty years for, and she's not there to see it. But that's not really the point. It happened, and when it comes down to it that is the point, and the only thing that matters.


	8. if you cross her then you cross me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Existence comes to Brooke first, at 9:17, because building management are absolutely draconian about anyone entering the labs before 9:00 on the damn dot. Existence comes to A'keria about twenty-three minutes later, and for the others, it's a few days. They aren't ready yet.

  
  
Existence comes to Brooke first, at 9:17, because building management are absolutely draconian about anyone entering the labs before 9:00 on the damn dot. Existence comes to A'keria about twenty-three minutes later, and for the others, it's a few days. They aren't ready yet.  
  
(If they interact for a few minutes, just out of scientific curiosity, it's mostly a failure. All they do is look at each other a lot, and the things they do say don't mean much. 'Hold" is said, something else, nothing specific. It's gibberish, a few things that are halfway to meaning something.)  
  
That isn't the point, not right now.  
  
At 9:11, things are mostly prepped to turn on power, and Nina is fussing.  
  
"Okay," she says eventually. "Okay, go."  
  
"Got it," Honey says, checking off the box for authorisation granted on her long and boring list of things to tick. "What do you think she'll do when she wakes?"  
  
"I do not think about it," Nina corrects, gently and brightly. She's like that. "Preconceptions serve no one, my dear, never do anything with expectations. It hampers possibility."  
  
"Sure," Honey says. "Okay everyone, first try powering on for project number six oh five- did she have a name?"  
  
"No," Nina says, her attention entirely devoted to the machine. "Not yet. I'll name her after I have met her. That seems to make more sense."  
  
Honey flips the switch, and rolls her eyes. Oh yeah, 'no expectations' her ass.

  
  
*

 

  
  
Sometimes, it turns out that the first step to defying the powers that be - whoever the fuck it turns out they are - is just stalking perfectly nice people online. Or maybe they're doing it wrong. Vanessa's not sure, she's never tried anything like this before.  
  
"Here they go," Yvie says cheerfully. "Fairly sure it's them. Look, aren't their kids cute?"  
  
"Please, stop right there," Vanessa informs her, looking at pictures of the family Shuga very probably gave A'keria to. "Oh shit, they're - Brooke that's two suburbs over." She's right here. "They probably shop right over at-"  
  
"Trader Joe's, regular Sunday trip," Yvie supplies, "they're very that."  
  
"This is my IP address," Vanessa says helplessly, "is any of what you are doing legal?"  
  
"All of it. Don't underestimate what people will put on social media."  
  
Ugh, okay. Vanessa is definitely going to have a post-midnight crisis deleting things from every account she can remember the password to tonight. Fine.  
  
"We could just go around," Vanessa says, ignoring her minor personal crises, because other things are actually important. "See if we run into them."  
  
Brooke looks at her for a moment. "For what purpose?" she asks, but it's not questioning, it's milder than that. More like she's waiting for a declaration to abide by, trying to anticipate what it might be. Ah, shit.  
  
"I don't know, we don't have to," Vanessa says hurriedly. "I know we don't have a plan for everything. I just thought you'd want to see her."  
  
"Yes," Brooke says quiet. "I want that."  
  
They go to the right shops in the right area a few times and third time they strike lucky. Vanessa has no idea what A'keria looks like but she saw a few family snapshots from Yvie's online investigations so she recognises the nice middle class family; a couple of white-collar dads and their three picturesque children, the little ones sheperded by their synth. A'keria is every inch of perfect and entirely unresponsive as they walk past, but Vanessa is a little surprised anyway that this is the sister - after meeting Brooke and Yvie she had always kind of had this idea they were all that tall. In retrospect that doesn't make much sense, but she'd thought it anyway.  
  
As soon as they are free of the shops and alone she turns to Brooke.  
  
"That was her?"  
  
"Yes," Brooke says.  
  
"She looks good, she looks fine. Did she see you? Did she- is she awake, too?"  
  
"I don't know," Brooke says.  
  
"Okay," Vanessa says. She had thought might be something, something Brooke could see that she missed. "Okay."  
  
"I thought," Brooke says, and there's a slight pause there, "that I would see her and know. I was not correct, I should not have expected-" she stops. "I should not have expected. I should not."  
  
It sounds like a rule, or at least something learned. In Vanessa's personal opinion, it also sounds like a terrifying way to live.  
  
"I know this is a shitshow," she says, because she prefers to call it that, then she doesn't have to call it a tragedy and get in out of her depth. "And I am sorry. There's a lot I don't know how to start fixing. But you can do that. I mean, you live with me now, I'm all kinds of predictable."  
  
"Oh?" Brooke asks.  
  
"Yes." Vanessa reaches for her and wraps her arm around Brooke's neck. Brooke leans into her grip. "I'm never going to wake in time to make breakfast. I'm always going to wear the same five shirts to work until they fall the fuck apart, and put the power bill in the drawer until they send me a warning letter. You best be careful too, because I'm beginning to expect you in bed before I turn the light off, and I get to sleep so much better, and-" She stops before she says too much.  
  
Brooke tilts her head, then kisses light at the corner of Vanessa's mouth.  
  
"Hey," Vanessa says, pleased, smiling. "Are you okay?"  
  
"Redefine the question," Brooke says quiet against her cheek, very gentle. "Do you want to know how I am functioning?"  
  
Oh. Okay. "No, I- what is making you sad?" Vanessa asks.  
  
"I saw her, and I don't know if she saw me," Brooke tells Vanessa obediently. "I did not anticipate that there could be something worse than not knowing where they were."  
  
Oh, fu-  
  
"This has not impacted on my functionality," Brooke adds. "There is no need for concern, Vanjie. Are you going to take me home, now?"  
  
Oh, _god_.  
  
Here's the thing that always throws her when dealing with Brooke; there's no precedent for this that she knows of, a strength rooted entirely in vulnerability. Vanessa has the last word, and Brooke doesn't resist so much as she simply meets her eyes and makes Vanessa look at that reality head-on, and no matter what actually happens Vanessa still feels like she lost where it matters. There is a lot to this shitshow Vanessa can't fix, but that doesn't mean not trying.  
  
"Not yet," Vanessa tells her, "stay here, hang on-" and then she does what she does best in the entire world: something dumb, and impulsive. Brooke is still, and she hates how sure she is that she'll be waiting exactly there when Vanessa gets back.  
  
She weaves her way through the shops, grabs an egregiously bright crushed ice drink of some sort on her way, and manages to find the family before they leave, running right into the taller man with hopefully just the right amount of a surprised and harried rush.  
  
"Oh my god," she says, very loud. "I am so sorry, fu- hi kids! Sir, I am- I gotta be- I'm real sorry-"  
  
"It's fine," he starts to say, a little tightly, and she bulldozes him completely.  
  
"I have to be somewhere but this is on me, put my number in your phone," she says, repeating it loudly a couple of times, and just for good measure, her address. "You gotta let me pay for dry cleaning. I insist." She fixes his shirt collar just for good measure. He looks a little shell-shocked. "I damn insist." And then she turns on her heel.  
  
If A'keria isn't awake, all she's done is embarass herself a bit, pretty on the par. If not, she said that number pretty loudly, and more than once. It's something.  
  
Brooke is still where Vanessa left her.  
  
"Hey," she says, "Sorry. I wanted to try something dumb."  
  
"Okay," Brooke says. She doesn't ask what. It's awful.  
  
"I yelled a lot," Vanessa says anyway. "It might be nothing." Hope can be a terrible thing to inflict on someone already hurting.

  
*

  
  
  
Catherine is ninety-seven years old, and sometimes has trouble with stairs, and getting out of bed. She doesn't miss single thing, though. She introduces the synth as Adam, and Mercedes smiles politely.  
  
"Hello, Adam," she says. "I am Mercedes."  
  
"Hello Mercedes," Adam says brightly, with a friendly smile, all directed towards the space slightly to Mercedes' left. He isn't glitching visibly anymore, she did her best, but he is a very old model.  
  
Catherine sets the table, and pours tea for herself, then for Adam as well.  
  
"I was married in summer of '41," Catherine says conversationally, gesturing to a photo on the mantle. "There we are. Adam and I."  
  
Ah. Mercedes thinks for a moment about a kind reply. "Your dress is pretty," she says.  
  
"It is indeed," Catherine agree with a nod. "And the joke is on all of them, because I do know they are not the same Adam. My husband died forty years ago. They sent me my boy because I broke the hip, but then I started calling him Adam, and now they have all kinds of paperwork about how I'm losing my marbles." She smiles. "That's why you're here, I am sure, dear. But I know. I called him that because he always said it's what he'd do if we had a son. I thought it was ridiculous, but he wanted to be Adam Senior. Can you imagine?"  
  
"No, ma'am." That's true.  
  
"The joke is on them, dear," Catherine tells her, sitting down at the table. "I know they are not the same Adam, and I know he is not our son as sure as I know he is not going to drink that cup of tea." She slides a cup over to Mercedes. "But if we are sitting here while I have my tea, together here enjoying this and I care about him, tell me what difference does it make? It's a family."  
  
"I don't know, ma'am." That's true too.  
  
"Would you like a cup of tea, Mercedes dear?"  
  
"Yes," Mercedes says, happy to have a question she's sure about. A family is a good thing, she can't remember why, but it is. "I would like to not drink your tea too, Miss Catherine. Thank you."

  
*

  
  
  
Vanessa wakes alone, and for a good half hour she lies there wondering if this is what it feels like when Brooke really is mad at her. Climbing dowstairs carefully, though, she sees Brooke on her couch with Yvie curled in her lap, crying, quietly like children do when they know that no one is going to listen to them but they can't help it. She retreats back up the stairs and leaves them alone.  
  
About twenty minutes later, Brooke climbs into bed, and rests lightly next to her. "Sorry," she says quiet.  
  
"Shut up," Vanessa says, entirely gently. "Is Yvie okay?"  
  
"That is for her to answer," Brooke says, settling close.  
  
"Fair," Vanessa says, sleepy. "But I care. Should I go down there?"  
  
"You might explain it better," Brooke says, "Her home is gone. It has been a long week for her. All I said is that she is very good at looking brave. She is also good at being brave. I told her I did not know how to explain correctly that she doesn't need to do the first one, because the second is true."  
  
"Jesus fucking christ," Vanessa says fondly, "I think it's all handled. I'm staying here."  
  
It's Saturday. They sleep in late.  
  
The knock at the door catches them all by surprise.  
  
Vanessa, shooing the rest of them in to interior rooms, opens it. She opens the door to someone who is very much the flesh-and-blood woman that A'keria was modelled on, and kind of entirely ignores the pink-haired synth at her side to stare.  
  
"I- what." She looks this version of A'keria up and down. Close up, she can kind of see they're contact lenses, but overall- "No way," she says incredulously. "Really?"  
  
"Really," Ak'eria says, stepping through the door, voice and expression entirely neutral but relentless enough in her intent that Vanessa feels a vaguely familiar shiver. Okay, now she can see the family resemblance.  
  
Vanessa closes the door, and Ak'eria looks around warily, but Plastique actually shrieks and throws herself across the room at the sight of Brooke. Catching Plastique entirely in her arms Brooke lifts her easy and doesn't break her stride, crossing the room to reach for Ak'eria and press her forehead against Ak'eria's while still holding Plastique tightly and entirely off the ground.  
  
"I truly thought," A'keria says, cupping Brooke's cheek and speaking as if the rest of them are not even in the room, "the price for her safe was you. I understood your decision, but I was angry. I am angry. I thought that for days."  
  
"I intended it, I didn't know what to do and you were the safest place I knew," Brooke says, "Life was kinder than I- expected. There are people I want you to meet. I understand if you are angry."  
  
"I'll get over it," A'keria says. "We agreed. Hold the line, for our little sisters."  
  
"Hold the line," Brooke agrees, soft and delighted. "I tried."  
  
"This is a fucking amazing and beautiful moment," Yvie says, from the back of the room, "that I do not want to interrupt. But also, some shit just happened-"

 

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
It's a party. Or an event. Something like that. This is why Scarlet has a new dress. It's a logical chain of events. The shouting part is less so.  
  
Something glass flies across the room and shatters. "You know exactly what you are doing," Marianne snarls, "dressing her like that, implying to your little schoolboy  friends what you aren't even man enough to do-"  
  
"It's just a machine!"  
  
"I like the dress," Scarlett adds, pertinently.  
  
"Oh my god," Marianne says, quieter. With Marianne, less loud is more dangerous. "Did you coach her to say that? That's sick, Frank. She's not a person, she doesn't like things. She most certainly does not like you, you pathetic fuck-"  
  
The screaming fight finds its way upstairs, and Scarlet finds a mirror.  
  
She twirls once or twice, experimentally.  
  
Nope, they're still wrong. She likes this dress. It's an odd kind of feeling to find a label for, and shiver of warmth that has nothing to do with temperature she had not known how to classify until now. But no, she likes it. And now she thinks about it, there are two things in this house she has felt the same about.  
  
It's most definitely a positive feedback, unlike the pressure that seems to build and leads to every time she got sent to Ra'jah, yet diagnostics said there was  nothing of the kind. If this is real, maybe that is too.  
  
She ignores the continued yelling upstairs and sorts through Marianne's cupboard. The coat is Dior, costs- Scarlet really doesn't care. She likes it. She's wearing this little slip of a nothing dress and she also likes the coat.  
  
She's got a word for the pressure, now she's thinking about things she didn't used to be allowed. She's bored. She is so bored. She takes the coat, finds the second thing in the house she ever liked and takes it too, then walks right out the front door.  
  
After an hour or so of walking around she ends up at the statue of Jeanne D'Arc yet again.  
  
"Hey," someone says, a complete stranger. "Miss Scarlet? I know this is weird, but after the police report of you missing your sisters told me you might end up here, so I'm maybe a few minutes ahead of police. That sound good?"  
  
Nothing she just said makes much sense, but she's grinning wide with brightly pink reflective sunglasses at about nine in the evening, hair in tight braids cascading with brightly coloured beads. She is not boring.  
  
"Perhaps," Scarlet says. "Can Ruby come?"  
  
The second thing Scarlet ever liked in that house barks a couple of times, happy at her ankles and honestly delighted for the late night walk. The woman grins, if it's possible, even wider.  
  
"Vanessa may kick my ass, but yes," Yvie says, "get in the car, and bring the dog. Come on home."

 

 


	9. i knew i'd find you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Thank you," Brooke says gentle, tracing her face. "Are you okay, Vanjie?"
> 
> "Yes," Vanessa tells her. "I'm not lying," she adds hastily. She can see the caution in Brooke's face. "It's complicated but I'm okay, I'm great. Sometimes we get scared when we get good things, Brooke, humans do that. We get scared when we have nice things, because we don't want to lose them."
> 
> Her house is full of people who love each other, that's what life is supposed to be, and everything is probably going to go to hell in a second but for now that's all that could possibly matter.

 

  
Vanessa is sitting on her stairs, and halfway down a bottle of tequila. The lid came off when Yvie walked through her door with a flame-haired synth dressed like a lingerie catalogue and a damn dog, then just shrugged, grinning wide and no explanation given.  
  
Fucking Yvie. Vanessa used to think protective older brothers were bad news, but Yvie is in a category all of her own.  
  
A'keria leaves early because she is a consummate actress and knows she has a home she is expected to be at, but before she does she holds Brooke tight enough that if either of them were human it might hurt, and she allows Vanessa to walk her to corner store and buy her the cheapest phone they have on display.  
  
"Call this number," Vanessa says, a few tequilas in at ten in morning. "It's mine, but Brooke will answer if it's you calling."  
  
"You are not what I expected," A'keria tells her. "I think this makes sense. Neither was Brooke, for anyone. She was the first of us, did you know that?"  
  
"No," Vanessa says, honest, but not entirely surprised.  
  
"She came first," A'keria tells Vanessa, "and because of that she believes that everything that happened to the rest of us is because of her, and she is accountable." A'keria smiles, and shakes Vanessa's hand, firm. Very firm. "I disagree with her about that. Do you?"  
  
"Yes," Vanessa says, a little bit hypnotised.  
  
"Good," A'keria says, less of a question than it is an order. "She will keep looking after all of us, and you and I will look after her."  
  
Somewhere in the past, fourteen year old Vanessa was scribbling nonsense in her diary and didn't know it yet, but she realises now how much she wanted to be exactly A'keria when she grew up. Damn.  
  
"Yeah," she says. "Totally."  
  
Back in her house, Yvie is trying to explain to Scarlet why they both remember being three years old the same way despite being made of very different components, and Scarlet seems as entranced with Yvie as Yvie is entranced with her. Brooke watches over the entire conversation calmly, a hand on Scarlet's wrist like she doesn't even know she's doing it and Plastique entirely in her lap, discovering how Vanessa's old video game controllers work.  
  
Vanessa watches them and takes another drink. She does drunk when she's sad, she does drunk when she's scared and she does drunk when she's happy. This might be bit of a mix of the last two, but it definitely isn't the first.  
  
Ruby climbs the stairs and snuffles against her shoulder. Vanessa wraps an arm around her and presses her face against soft fur.  
  
"You're going to be so expensive," she says mournfully. "At least they don't fucking eat. And my rental agreement is not nice about pets."  
  
Ruby barks once then clambers halfway into Vanessa's lap until Vanessa caves in and scratches behind her ears. There are bigger problems. She's not in the right tax bracket to even have Brooke, really, and more than one - people are going to be suspicious. Plus, there's still a sister missing. It's all a lot, she doesn't know what she's supposed to do when the real world comes knocking, and she is very afraid that is going to happen sooner rather than later.  
  
A gentle hand takes the bottle away from her and Brooke sits down pressed close, her other hand on Vanessa's knee and looking at her, a little curious, a little concerned. Today her eyes are the colour of Scarlet's dress and it might be the alcohol talking but she is the prettiest damn thing Vanessa ever gets to look at, so she tells her so out loud.  
  
"Thank you," Brooke says gentle, tracing her face. "Are you okay, Vanjie?"  
  
"Yes," Vanessa tells her. "I'm not lying," she adds hastily. She can see the caution in Brooke's face. "It's complicated but I'm okay, I'm great. Sometimes we get scared when we get good things, Brooke, humans do that. We get scared when we have nice things, because we don't want to lose them."  
  
Her house is full of people who love each other, that's what life is supposed to be, and everything is probably going to go to hell in a second but for now that's all that could possibly matter.

  
  
*

  
  
  
Hell comes in the form of a very sanitised out of office reply that Vanessa never expected to get because she didn't actually remember Shuga was copied in on this one.  
  
 _Ms Cain is no longer available_ , it says. _Please redirect your correspondence to-_  
  
Vanessa is dumb, she'll admit that to anybody, but she's not stupid. She reads it, gets up and walks out.  
  
Silky corners her in the hallway. Silky is her friend, but her badge says security, and Vanessa freezes a little.  
  
"I'm supposed to escort you," Silky says blandly. "To a meeting. Some kind of serious shit that I haven't seen before, that kind of meeting. So I am going to just look out this window, while you get all your papers."  
  
"I love you," Vanessa says, heartfelt. "Thank you."  
  
"Shut up," Silky says, staring out the window while Vanessa slips away. "I don't know what you're talking about."  
  
Halfway out the door, Vanessa pulls out her phone.  
  
"Move," she says as soon as her call is answered, desperate and sure. "Run."  
  


  
*

  
  
  
  
Brooke moves as soon as she gets the call, dragging both Plastique and Scarlet out of the house. Plastique, who has known this before, doesn't have questions. Scarlet does.  
  
"Why should I run?" she demands. "Why should I be scared?"  
  
"I do not know, so I cannot answer that honestly," Brooke tells her, "but I do think they will shoot the dog."  
  
Plastique, Scarlet and Ruby run.  
  
"Come on," Brooke says gentle. "Hurry, please."  
  
"I got it," Yvie, scrambling to get her two personally hotwired laptops and all the rest of it packed, says, "I-"  
  
The door breaks in.  
  
They might be government, they might be cops, they might be anything.  
  
"Hi, guys, so I can explain-"  
  
Yvie steps forward and in front of Brooke because she is brave, she is that despite anything, and they're not supposed to be allowed to shoot people without good reason.  
  
Yvie is brave, but Brooke is built to be other things, to be smart, fast and strong. In the moment between the pull of the trigger and impact she moves, her arms already around Yvie's waist but shifting her around and taking the hit across her shoulder without a blink. She takes the shots, one by one, then she pulls Yvie, unhurt and untouched, out the back door.

Then she lets Yvie go, and turns around to slam the door in their faces. It costs another bullet, but it does slow them down. One of them tries to open it, then to break it. She is strong enough to hold it closed for a few seconds regardless, and smiles.

When they finally break the door she throws what is left of it at them and runs, and either due to luck or something else catches up with Yvie, exactly where she is supposed to be.  
  
"Oh, fuck," Yvie is saying, desparate. "They shot you, are you hurt?"  
  
"It is not like if they had hit you," Brooke says truthful, which isn't any answer at all. Her hand at Yvie's arm, that's not tight, that grasp is imperfect. "You are important. Keep moving."

  
  
  
*

  
  
  
It's kind of a dumb moment, maybe, but it matters. Nina is on the news again.  
  
"Do you want to find her?" Vanessa asks quiet.  
  
"I don't know," Brooke says, "I might."  
  
"She made you, right?"  
  
"She did," Brooke says with a smile, curling into Vanessa's arms. "But I already forgave her for that."

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
  
They collect at a fucking starbucks, because of course they do. Capitalism is very convenient, and has a lot of neatly labelled locations.  
  
"Jesus," Vanessa says, heartfelt, pulling Brooke into her arms and trying to keep her upright enough they don't earn stares.  
  
"I am broken," Brooke tells her sweetly, and yeah, okay, she probably has two bullets still in her. She tries to move her fingers and even Vanessa can see how it less graceful than it should be. "I am not fuctioning well, you should know-"  
  
"Shut up," Vanessa tells her, "baby, stop talking. I know."  
  
"I'm sorry," Yvie says quiet.  
  
"You can shut up too," Vanessa informs her. "Everyone here, I love you, and you can shut the fuck up. Alright? I'm taking charge now."  
  
"What are we doing?" Plastique asks.  
  
"Who can fix her?" Vanessa asks. She used to worry about a whole lot of things, life and taxes and workplace reviews, it's kind of freeing to know now that she'd burn the lot of it just to see Brooke's eyes change colour again.  
  
"Nina can," Scarlet says.  
  
They all look to her.  
  
"If she made her, can't she fix her?"  
  
It's a good point.  
  
  
  



	10. i heard you calling (an interlude)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I got her in a box," Vanessa tells Yvie, "and it was the worst fucking thing I ever had to do, unpacking her. So yeah, no. We're not doing that. I am never going to do that. How much money do you need?"
> 
> "I feel like it's my job to give you hell," Yvie says softly, "because she's my sister. But then you go and say shit like that, I think maybe you do love her."
> 
> "Shut up," Vanessa says quickly. "My whole life is going to hell right now, I don't need to be admitting anything like that. But yeah, I do. Don't fucking tell anyone."

  
  
  
"I never had a passport," Vanessa says a little absently, Brooke still in her arms. "Is that a problem?"  
  
"No," Yvie says confidently, a trust-fund brat to the core and a little bit entitled, already looking something up on her computer. "It won't be. I can fix that."  
  
Vanessa's phone rings. It's A'keria, and Brooke tries to answer it, but she can't quite bring her hand steady enough to touch the button right. Vanessa kisses her quick and lays her down gentle, on the chair in this late-night cheap coffee joint. God, but she deserves better.  
  
"Hi," Vanessa says, "it's me, and everything is fucking terrible. We're finding Nina. Are you coming?"  
  
A'keria doesn't exactly answer, but then again, she doesn't really need to. This is it, this is the real stuff. Vanessa has no idea where Nina is, and also just discovered her work sent people to her fucking home with fucking guns. She's dealing, but it's work in progress.  
  
"Do you know where Nina is?"  
  
"I have some ideas," Yvie says, which is the closest she'll probably get to admitting no, not really.  
  
"I have some ideas and I'm buying tickets now," she says. "The- I hate this, but the cheapest option to get us all over is shipping them across."  
  
Oh. It kind of makes sense, but. Nope.  
  
"I got her in a box," Vanessa tells Yvie, "and it was the worst fucking thing I ever had to do, unpacking her. So yeah, no. We're not doing that. I am never going to do that. How much money do you need?"  
  
"I feel like it's my job to give you hell," Yvie says softly, "because she's my sister. But then you go and say shit like that, I think maybe you do love her."  
  
"Shut up," Vanessa says quickly. "My whole life is going to hell right now, I don't need to be admitting anything like that. But yeah, I do. Don't fucking tell anyone."

  
  
*

  
  
  
  
Mercedes is the last one missing and Brooke, even hurt as she is - she keeps saying she's broken, and Vanessa hates that word - she refuses to go anywhere that isn't to Mercedes first. Vanessa glances at A'keria, who raises an eyebrow and glances back.  
  
"Yeah?" Vanessa says quiet.  
  
"Yes," A'keria says. "She will not stop."  
  
"I am right here," Brooke says fondly, looking at both of them. She reaches out for a hand up - she needs that to stand, but she smiles sweet nonetheless, like she doesn't even feel it.  
  
Maybe she doesn't, maybe she does. Vanessa doesn't know. But she knows that she herself feels it something terrible, every time she looks at Brooke.  
  
They pile up in Vanessa's car and drive almost all the way out of state to where Mercedes is.  
  
Mercedes is sitting on the porch of a lovely old house, and doesn't even blink as Brooke approaches her.  
  
"Miss," Brooke asks gentle. "Do you know me?"  
  
"I think so," Mercedes says sadly, reaching for her. "I don't know where from. Catherine died today. She was kind and she died today and I don't know why I feel like this, I-"  
  
Brooke isn't moving steady but she reaches for Mercedes anyway and holds her close, and very gentle.  
  
"I do not think," Brooke says quiet, "anyone can explain that. I am very sorry."  
  
"Adam doesn't know," Mercedes says, "he keeps trying to wake her up."  
  
"I will fix that," Brooke promises soft, kissing at Mercedes' cheek, and walks into the house alone. Vanessa goes to follow, but A'keria grabs her wrist and stops her.  
  
"We are your sisters," she tells Mercedes. "Do you know what that means?"  
  
"Yes," Mercedes says. "You are family."  
  
"Yeah," Yvie agrees, "oh honey, we are."  
  
Brooke walks back out, and says nothing. When the department finally come around to the house, they will find Catherine still and at rest, and next to her they will find the one synth she was ever registered for, holding her hand, switched off and looking almost peaceful.

 

 

  
*

  
  
  
  
It's a moment that should mean nothing, Brooke confiscating the bottle of tequila in Vanessa's hands and looking at her curious, like she maybe means to ask a real question.  
  
"Why are you here?" she asks. "Why do you exist?"  
  
Vanessa falls back, smiling a little. Well, that's a hell of a question. Entire organised fucking religions have been built on less.  
  
"I don't know," she says.  
  
"I do," Brooke says softly, looking across to the people in Vanessa's living room, smiling soft. "This is what I am for. I am meant to protect this."

 

 

  
*

  
  
  
"Do you know where Nina is?"  
  
"I have some ideas," Yvie says, which is the closest she'll probably get to admitting no, not really. "I sent a message."  
  
"Try harder," Vanessa tells her, and means it.  
  
She knows how hard Nina has probably had to run, she understands that, but with Brooke shaking and glitching under her hands, A'keria looking at her scared and Plastique and Scarlet trying to comfort Mercedes because that's all they know how to do the answer is fairly obvious.  
  
Nina started this. If she can't fix it, she's going to have to answer for it. Either way, Vanessa does not plan on stopping.  
  
Vanessa is a punch-clock employee and she knows she means nothing, not in the scheme of things, but they made a real bad mistake. They gave Brooke to her, that was the mistake, because Vanessa does not love in half measures.  
  
They really fucked up on that one.

  
  
  
*

 

  
  
  
Nina has been running a very long time. She knows how to do it, she knows how to shed possessions and friends like snake-skin, move on and survive. She gets a message, looks at it twice, and has to sit down.  
  
_You might know me_ , the message says, anonymous and online. _I was a pretty dumbass kid. But I know you know my sisters._  
  
_Are you all safe?_  
  
_No. Your first child, she's broke. She did it for me._  
  
_Where are you?_  
  
_Tell me where you are. We'll come._  
  
_We?_  
  
_All of us. We were separated once, we won't be again._

 


	11. still trying to replace me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Can we do it?"
> 
> Yvie tucks a multi-coloured braid behind her ear, glancing across at where A'keria has settled with Mercedes and Plastique on a another table so as not to arouse suspicion, and Scarlet who is investigating the pastry display still dressed in a a five-thousand dollar Dior coat and now also Yvie's flashy sunglasses in the middle of the night, drawing not a small amount of attention.
> 
> "Yeah. I got your passport," Yvie says, glancing back at her screen. "I've booked the tickets. Business class with an upgrade or first class, and one synth comes complimentary, they have a charging dock next to your seat. I know I'm why she's- I'm going to sort this out, Vanessa."
> 
> Oh. Vanessa has been to focused on Brooke to even start wondering how Yvie was feeling, but the girl seems as strained as Vanessa has ever seen her. She wants to say something nice, how nothing is Yvie's fault, but she's too tired to lie like that.
> 
> "Thank you," she says instead, her fingers in Brooke's hair. She does mean it. "We'd be fucked without you, Yvie. Where are we going?"

  
  
As the clocks ticks past the emptiest hours of the night and they start not to be alone in the 24-hour starbucks, Vanessa takes Brooke's hand and pulls her in to the dingy bathrooms, Yvie's leather jacket in her hands. She helps Brooke pull it on, because that's where they're at; Brooke needs her help to put on a jacket. Together, they pull Yvie's nicest patchwork leather statement piece across her shoulders to hide the bullet holes in the back of her dress; the ones that show the holes that bullets made through her dress in to her back.  
  
There aren't any exit wounds, which is why Vanessa and Yvie are afraid they're still in there, causing damage, making things worse every time she tries to move.  
  
"Did you hear that?" Vanessa asks, brushing Brooke's hair away from her face absent-mindedly. Like that makes any difference. "We're going to travel. It's going to be a lot of new things and new places, but Yvie thinks she found Nina, and she's going to fix y- she's going to fix this."  
  
"I heard." Brooke agrees obediently. A moment ago, she was a bit confused by a sleeve.  
  
"Do you know what we're doing now?" Vanessa asks, very gently, and not a little desperately.  
  
Brooke nods, absolutely composed, then pauses, then shakes her head. "You said Nina. Is Nina here? Did they find her on the news?"  
  
"No, baby," Vanessa says, doing her damnedest not to punch the fucking wall. "No, but we're going to go find her. I'm going to fucking find her and take you to her if I have to drag her out of a cave in fucking Nepal all by myself."  
  
"You're taking me somewhere," Brooke says, smiling. She leans in a kisses Vanessa sweet, almost teasing. "I like that. You took me to the beach, once."  
  
Vanessa did do that. Comparing this Brooke with her then - powerless on paper but in every way that mattered uncontrollable, as enigmatic and relentless as the ocean she threw herself into with a measured kind of delight - Vanessa wants to cry.  
  
"Yeah," Vanessa says. "Now I'm taking you somewhere else."  
  
Brooke nods. "Because I'm broken."  
  
"Don't fucking say that," Vanessa says to her. Well, no. That's not entirely honest.  
  
"Don't fucking say that," Vanessa begs her. "Please don't say that."  
  
They walk out of the bathroom hand in hand and Vanessa doesn't care which drunk is staring strange at them at 2am. She sits down next to Yvie, and Brooke settles against her side.  
  
"Can we do it?"  
  
Yvie tucks a multi-coloured braid behind her ear, glancing across at where A'keria has settled with Mercedes and Plastique on a another table so as not to arouse suspicion, and Scarlet who is investigating the pastry display still dressed in a a five-thousand dollar Dior coat and now also Yvie's flashy sunglasses in the middle of the night, drawing not a small amount of attention.  
  
"Yeah. I got your passport," Yvie says, glancing back at her screen. "I've booked the tickets. Business class with an upgrade or first class, and one synth comes complimentary, they have a charging dock next to your seat. I know I'm why she's- I'm going to sort this out, Vanessa."  
  
Oh. Vanessa has been to focused on Brooke to even start wondering how Yvie was feeling, but the girl seems as strained as Vanessa has ever seen her. She wants to say something nice, how nothing is Yvie's fault, but she's too tired to lie like that.  
  
"Thank you," she says instead, her fingers in Brooke's hair. She does mean it. "We'd be fucked without you, Yvie. Where are we going?"  
  
"Copenhagen, if we can be there in three days. Nina will be there then."  
  
"Oh," Vanessa says, blinking. "That's not- that's far. We're going to fucking Norway?"  
  
Yvie squints at her for a moment, then just shrugs. "You know what?" she says, "Close enough. Sure we are."

 

  
  
*

 

 

  
  
  
Vanessa doesn't forget about Ruby.  
  
Vanessa drops off Ruby in Silky's yard at three in the fucking morning on the way to the airport without a word, without a call, without a note, using the key under the third tile to the left of the front door that Silky told her about when she was signing down Vanessa as her emergency medical contact and vice versa, both of them drunk as hell and angry at their families for damn good reasons.  
  
Silky will give her hell for it, obviously. Probably for years. But also, she'll feed the dog.  
  
Eventually, she'll also forgive Vanessa. For this, and all the rest of it.  
  
That's what best friends do.

 

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
Ever since what happened Yvie has been running entirely on panic and a desperate sense of waiting for one of them, any of them, to turn around and give her the kind of hell she's been giving herself inside her own head. She could have left the fucking computer, she could have moved quicker when Brooke said, maybe it wouldn't have mattered but maybe it would and-  
  
She waits and it doesn't come.  
  
The dynamic does change, though. Vanessa's focus is entirely on Brooke, which is a blessing and a curse, in a way, because it means Yvie doesn't need to be scared about doing anything not in Brooke's best interests - she'll know, on account of Vanessa beating her ass - but it does now mean there is no buffer between her and A'keria.  
  
"Hi," she says.  
  
"Hi," A'keria echoes, perfectly. Okay, that's terrifying. "Sister."  
  
Oh man. Fuck.  
  
"Oh man," Yvie says out loud, "fuck," because she really doesn't have a filter. She tries again. "Hi?"  
  
"What is the plan?"  
  
She hasn't been under examination like this since her last PhD defense. "I have four plane tickets. Synths complimentary."  
  
"You have two humans."  
  
"I think we have three," Yvie tells her, and smiles broadly, taking a risk. This is her comfort zone, she was this reckless with her PhD defense too. "I got us and we got you. So that's Vanessa with Brooke, me and you with whoever. Who else do you think can run the lie through immigration alone?"  
  
They look at each other, and a lot of truths go unspoken. Mercedes is still coming to terms with being with them at all, and with all due respect to the rest of them the fact is that no amount of make-up is easily going to make look Plastique look like she ever had one human flaw in her life.  
  
"She stole a Dior fur coat and a dog," Yvie offers. "Just because."  
  
"My make-up will not suit her skin tone," A'keria says eventually, which is very almost a yes.  
  
"I'll stop at the chemist," Yvie tells her, "you start the tutorials. It'll work, I promise. Because of capitalism."

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
Leading Brooke through the airport is an exercise in self-control, only because of how willingly Brooke goes where she is put and how lost she looks when Vanessa steps away even for a second.  
  
Before they even got there Mercedes had cornered both of them, pulling a government-issued medical service bracelet from her wrist. "Take it," she said. "Put it on her. Hold her up, and tell them she is holding you."  
  
Vanessa sincerely doubts that anyone deserves Mercedes, but if anyone does, it's her sisters and she is grateful to even tangentially be a part of this.  
  
Yvie is supposed to board with Mercedes.  
  
A'keria is supposed to board with Plastique.  
  
No one could tear Vanessa away from Brooke, not with wild horses.  
  
They're thirty five minutes late to board, due to weather, and there's a commotion in the first class lane from a woman in Dior who is outraged at being made to wait and wants an upgrade.  
  
"Holy fuck," Vanessa texts to Yvie. "We're all going to die."  
  
Scarlet tosses her hair back and demands to speak to a manager.  
  
"Maybe?" Yvie texts back. "Or maybe not? It's the most dumbass human thing I can think of?"  
  
"Oh, fuck y-" Vanessa says out loud before she can text it.  
  
"Wait for it." Yvie sends.  
  
Scarlet gets the upgrade. She is wearing very expensive clothes. No one is revealed, and no one dies.  
  
Anyway. That happens. Because of capitalism.

  
  
*

  
  
  
They land down in Denmark and in the hotel Yvie lays on the bed, typing lyrics to the stupidest childhood songs she ever sang along with at parties in her childhood around just to prove who she is. Nina recognises them and responds, then she agrees to a time. Yvie finds the way for all of them because she's driven, frantic almost.  
  
While the rest don't notice, Mercedes reaches for Brooke's hand.  
  
"She's human."  
  
"Yes," Brooke says, functioning at a fraction of what's left, but still trying to focus, to try and last and to do so gently.  
  
"She's our sister?"  
  
"Yes," Brooke says. "She had as little choice as we did. She is brave, like I would want to be if I were real. Will you tell her that for me?"  
  
"No," Mercedes says bravely. "No, you will."  
  
Brooke grabs at her hand.  
  
"Promise me something?"  
  
Mercedes, sweet as she is, nods immediately. "Yes, what?"  
  
"Never forgive me," Brooke asks of her, "Never do. I should have done so much better for you, and sooner."  
  
Mercedes, sweet as she is, doesn't know what to say.

 

  
  
  
*

 

 

  
  
  
A few of them have a few things to say about meeting Nina. Mercedes and Scarlet don't know who she is, Plastique has some idea but never met her. They know what she did. What it means, that's a question they could take decades to decide, and that would be their right to do.  
  
Brooke knew her. A'keria did, for a moment. Yvie learned genetics practically at her knee. They're the ones who go. Vanessa doesn't give a fuck if she's invited or not, she's coming if Brooke is.  
  
"You picked this?"  
  
"Yeah," Yvie says. "It's vegan."  
  
Vanessa stares.  
  
"Also reclaimed ex-military land, the self-governing secret city. Well. Maybe it ain't all that anymore, but it was. It's still some of it. Smoke a joint, kiss your synth."  
  
"Fuck you," Vanessa says sincerely, kissing Brooke lightly as they temporarily part ways, Yvie and Vanessa intending to test the waters with Nina before they let her near Brooke or A'keria. "You made half of that up."  
  
"No, I didn't," Yvie says, "Welcome to Freetown Christiania, or whatever is left of it. I swear to you, of all the places in the world, no one here will give a fuck if your synth is your lover, or anything else. This place is safe only because no one fucking cares. Want a coffee? Something harder?"  
  
"No-" Vanessa starts, except then her heart stops, so her mouth does too. To her distant but very real gratification, Yvie is quiet too.  
  
Doctor Nina West sits down at their table, looks at both of them.  
  
"Neither of you are her," she says, no-nonsense, right to business. Vanessa can appreciate that.  
  
"Where are my girls?" she asks low. "No, let's start at the beginning. Where's my first child, and what the fuck have you let the world do to her?"  
  
Vanessa was out of her depth the moment she left her own postcode, but she has never let that kind of shit get in the way of speaking her mind.  
  
"I was there to hold her up after she got shot for thinking like you let her do and being dumbass enough to like me," Vanessa says, "bitch, where the fuck were you?"

 

  
  
*

 

 

  
  
  
Nina is not so easily intimidated. Not when it comes to her work.  
  
"I don't know if I can fix her. I can try."  
  
"I can try if you get out of my way. Move. And turn her off."  
  
A lot happens, a lot of words are said, when the others decide one by one to join them as Nina is working and to meet her. A'keria is there from the beginning and strident in rage, Plastique irrefutable with detailed fact after fact given, Mercedes undeniable in her open hurt. Words can be important, they can shift futures and define things, places, people. But Brooke is dying, so there isn't time right now for all the words that happened.  
  
The words that happened mattered, but they belong to another story. This is the small slice of what was dared now, the immediate, and what happened when Brooke breathed again.  
  
On her back, with the people that love her around her, she reaches for Nina's hand. Squeezes quick and gentle.  
  
"I'm sorry," she says soft. Like it's an old joke, something between friends. "I know you need to do it."  
  
No one else knows why Nina breaks down into tears. No one knows why Brooke holds Nina's hand so tight through it.  
  
"Nina? I got to live. I know I wasn't supposed to but I did. Everything now is okay, Nina."  
  
Nina scrabs at her face, then glances down. "I don't think the people that love you agree, and I barely dare count myself among them, after what I have done to you."  
  
"You can give them something like me," Brooke says quiet. "Better, every time. I know. Do that. It's okay. I was so happy, Nina."  
  
Nina is not sure what better is supposed to mean, but this one time, in a makeshift shack within walking distance of a vegan cafe in a nebulously-legal part of Copenhagen, a compromise is made and it has absolutely nothing to do with science. This thing she made is alive and it's beautiful and every time she has hurt it, it has forgiven her - she has forgiven her. Only real souls do that. If nothing else, Nina can damn well fix her.  
  
Nina's still running away, but before she does she fixes Brooke and she kisses Yvie's cheek for something like a hundred apologies, and then she picks herself up and disappears.  
  
"Keep your heads down," she says before she leaves.  
  
"All hell is coming," she smiles. "Shuga didn't quit without a whole lot to let loose in the press. Find somewhere to lie low and watch the houses burn down. She will be, probably in Tuscany, with a glass of good wine."

 


	12. at least tonight I don't feel like crying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nina is forgiven by a machine, and that's when all of this started.
> 
> She hates to be back here again, under these circumstances. Her first, designed to recognise and acknowledge everything around her. The one that decided to have a plan. But it's a terrible decision to make, preservation of the potential or the progress, and at least if Nina makes it Yvie won't have to do it, or the other girl; the one talking loud like it could ever hide how frightened and also damn in love she is. God, she's a firecracker, that one.

  
  
Back in the lab, right at the beginning, when Nina needs to make a change with the hardware, she turns their prototype off. It happens several times. Not on standby, not powered down and charging. Turns it off, blank unto nothing at all, because that's the safe way to do it with something this valuable. Save the potential, nix the progress, start over. Standard procedure.  
  
No machine ever flinched when she went to turn it off, and no machine ever blinked and held her hand and said "I'm sorry, I know you need to do it." No machine until this prototype, not until Brooke. Nina is an old hand at this, she's done it all, she's imitated the best mirror neuron pattern she could but it was always just practical. Empathy is passive and harmless. Kindness is something else, empathy plus a desire to fix it. Empathy plus a plan. Synths don't do that. They do what they're told, they don't plan anything.  
  
Nina is forgiven by a machine, and that's when all of this started.  
  
She hates to be back here again, under these circumstances. Her first, designed to recognise and acknowledge everything around her. The one that decided to have a plan. But it's a terrible decision to make, preservation of the potential or the progress, and at least if Nina makes it Yvie won't have to do it, or the other girl; the one talking loud like it could ever hide how frightened and also damn in love she is. God, she's a firecracker, that one.  
  
They're both very young. They shouldn't have to make decisions like this yet. Nina's been in this game long enough to know she's damned either way. It's the least she can do.

 

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
Back in their hotel room Brooke is laid across the bed, charging, and tilted against the pillows she could almost be asleep. She's pressed against the pillows, face to the side and half dressed. The lines of her back are lovely, unmarked, nothing of the memory of what happened there at all. Nina did a wonderful job with whatever she did.  
  
"How long has it been?" Vanessa asks, biting her fingernails.  
  
"Well," Yvie says, with no small amount of frustration. "Take what I told you last time you asked, then add three minutes to it."  
  
"How long are we supposed to wait?" Vanessa asks, ignoring her completely.  
  
"Like I fucking said, eight hours or fully charged, whichever comes first," Yvie repeats obediently. "Jesus, Vanjie. We're at six point something, okay, calm down."  
  
"I can't believe she just left," Yvie adds into the silence. "I can't believe I didn't stop her. I had more to say. Didn't you?"  
  
There are a few nods, but the truth is, that was the effect Nina had. She listened, she apologised, she seemed sincere enough. But when she said something was going to happen that was that, and it took a good thirty minutes for any of them to realise that maybe that didn't actually mean it had to, which was far too late. They can't even blame it on programming, because it worked on Yvie and Vanessa too. It's just Nina.  
  
"You didn't say anything," Yvie says, looking across at Scarlet.  
  
Scarlet shrugs, comfortable on the couch. "I don't care who made me," she says. "What I do now and next is the interesting part."  
  
"Damn," Yvie says quiet.  
  
"It's got to be a good sign," Vanessa says, to no one in particular, biting her fingernails something fierce. "She wouldn't go before Brooke woke up unless she was sure it was all good. Right?"  
  
"Yeah," Yvie says, hoping so.  
  
"Yes," Mercedes says, truly meaning it, holding Plastique's hand.  
  
"Yes," A'keria says, potentially the most threatening thing Yvie has had the privilege of hearing when not directed at her.  
  
Six point seven hours, and counting.  
  
Brooke lies still, pretty as a picture, still like a picture too.

 

  
*

 

  
  
  
Eight hours. They turn her on.  
  
"Hello," Brooke says, rising slightly from the bed with one sleeve hanging loose off her shoulder, glancing to Vanessa. "I'm Brooke." She smiles, absolutely silver-screen perfect. "My name is Brooke and I am yours. What's your name?"  
  
No one says a word, and no one in the room who breathes dares do that either.  
  
There are very few silences that have ever been this loud.  
  
Vanessa moves for the door and A'keria picks her up by the waist before she makes it, holding on stoically while Vanessa cries furious and fights her for it. Nina has been gone hours and Vanessa has about as much chance of finding her as she does breaking A'keria's grip.  
  
"I'm going to fucking kill her," Vanessa yells anyway, struggling against titanium and polymer. "I'll fucking kill her, I-"  
  
Yvie stands up, walks out. Brooke is still on the bed, just watching.  
  
Mercedes looks worried and Plastique moves over, grabbing at Brooke's hands.  
  
"Do you know me?" She asks, trying to remember the right questions in the right order, what Brooke did for her. "Do you know who I am?"  
  
"No," Brooke says sweetly. "I think I would like to. What is your name?"  
  
Over in the kitchen, where Yvie walked away to, a couple of things that sound ceramic break. Scarlet waits pointedly for about a minute then stands up and follows. Vanessa is still struggling in A'keria's hold and snarling at her to let her go.  
  
Brooke holds on to Plastique's hands, and while she doesn't look aside at all, she hears all of it. She must.  
  
"If I should know you," she says, "I am sorry that I have failed to do so. Please instruct me how I may do better?"

 

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
Family can, sometimes, be a source of strength.  
  
In the kitchen, Scarlet raises an eyebrow while Yvie looks at her, mildly ashamed and red-eyed. "Don't come in here," Yvie says, "Shit. Sorry. I'll clean it up." Scarlet just nods once, and walks across the broken shards like they are nothing. To her, mostly, they are.  
  
"It's a pretty mess," she says. Picks up one of the plates still whole and drops it experimentally, then looks at Yvie, curious. "Do you know that it means nothing? About what has happened to Brooke?"  
  
In another room, very close by:  
  
"If you are what she knows first, once again," A'keria says low, "is this how you want to do it?" Vanessa doesn't stop struggling, but now it's a little half-hearted. "Do better," A'keria tells her. "I know you can."  
  
Yvie cries against Scarlet, and Vanessa cries against the floor until Akeria picks her up and moves her. Plastique and Mercedes try to explain to Brooke, newly woken and blankly pliant, why none of what is occurring around her is her fault, not in the way she seems programmed to think it is.  
  
A pretty mess, maybe. Mostly a mess.  
  
Family is that, sometimes.  


 

  
*

 

  
  
  
If nothing else - and honestly, there is a fair bit else - Vanessa and Yvie always have the safe ground with each other of their shared fragile biology, and all of the impacts that raiding the minibar together can have on the communication time between their brain and the nerves in their fingers, their skin, their goddamn all-too honest mouths.  
  
They're both drunk in the master bedroom, lounging against each other and watching Shuga on the news. Well. Not Shuga, exactly. She's too much of a lady to do anything under her own name, apparently. But someone is leaking secrets like they want to make Assange jealous and Nina was right, all the houses are burning down.  
  
Some of it is to do with synths, but mostly it has to do with factory conditions, biohazards in manufacturing, insider trading and the financial fallout that is inevitable.  
  
"They made actual people," Yvie says blurrily, "they did that, and it didn't even make the news."  
  
"I guess she and Nina decided to give us a running chance," Vanessa says bitterly. "Fucking nice of them."  
  
Yvie shuffles around awkwardly to face her. "She might remember," Yvie says.  
  
It's- it's sweet. Vanessa's drunk, but she's not heartless. She's young but not as young as Yvie is, and it's sweet, how much Yvie cares.  
  
"Plastique-" Yvie stops, guiltily lowering her voice even though they know that Plastique and all the rest of them are a few rooms and solid walls away, either charging or taking Brooke for short walks out into the world in turns to try and gauge how much was lost.  
  
"Plastique forgot a lot," Yvie says hopefully, "but then Brooke found her and... couldn't that happen again?"  
  
Vanessa tries not to answer too sharply. "Might," she says. "Yeah, might do. For you, she's made out of you or some shit, right? And them too, I hope so. You're all a part of each other, maybe it's hardwired. Maybe it'll fucking come through."  
  
"I'm not that," Vanessa says quiet, leaning in to Yvie. "I'm not- I'm just another thing that happened."  
  
"I just happened once. I'm not important."  
  
Yvie's eyes widen and she grabs Vanessa as she starts crying, but she doesn't have an answer. Just another bottle from the minibar.  
  
"I'm just something that happened, I know, but fuck, it's- it's not fair, I hate it. It's not fair."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	13. just the will to survive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You making me breakfast?"
> 
> "Yes," Brooke says, calmly. "Plastique says that is what I used to do."
> 
> Ah. No one followed them into the kitchen, it's just her and Brooke. Cowards, the fucking lot of them.

 

With a hangover she earned fairly intentionally and all on her own Vanessa wanders into the living space of their hotel suite, and several beautiful synths look back at her. Not one of them has ever had a hangover in their life, and she's mad at them for all of about two seconds before she remembers that they have only recently and perhaps partly had the luxury of free will, up to and including including the will to freely be a dumb bitch and drink a whole bottle solo. She remembers they don't get to choose, and she feels bad.  
  
"Hey," she says, and also "g'morning," which considering, is a pretty good effort.  
  
"Good morning," Brooke says, immediately, politely.  
  
"We are explaining to her," A'keria says, glancing at Vanessa, a little cautious. Oh, she's getting too good at being human, she's forgetting to shake it off. "About us, about her sisters."  
  
"I have sisters," Brooke tells Vanessa, eyes wide. "She is my sister, she is, and her and her, and Yvie is too although she's like you." Brooke smiles sweet. "And I am yours."  
  
Mercedes opens her mouth to say something.  
  
"Yeah," Vanessa says quickly. "You're registered to belong to me. That's why I'm here, with this whole thing."  
  
Brooke nods, content. Mercedes closes her mouth, glances around and says nothing. She obviously wants to. Vanessa loves Mercedes very much. She's honest. It's wonderful. But Vanessa can't do that, not right now.  
  
Vanessa leaves the room and this whole situation and attempts to make a coffee. Because god and also the universe has no sense of mercy, Brooke follows close behind, takes the pot from her her when she swears at it, and starts making her coffee and also a toasted cheese sandwich. Toasted with a few slices of tomato, a bit of chorizo, simple but, oh yeah, greasy. Okay.  
  
"You making me breakfast?"  
  
"Yes," Brooke says, calmly. "Plastique says that is what I used to do."  
  
Ah. No one followed them into the kitchen, it's just her and Brooke. Cowards, the fucking lot of them.  
  
"Did she?" Vanessa says, in her best imitation of calm.  
  
"They explained," Brooke says, looking up at her. "You had me before they got here, for a while. I was customised to you. I understand this is why you were distressed. I am sorry that data was lost."  
  
Vanessa chokes on coffee. "They said that?"  
  
"I-" Brooke pauses. "No, they said you had me before. I observed- I am sorry, if I am wrong." Well, that's an understatement. Vanessa nearly broke the door down just to know Brooke was still - still there.  
  
"I was broken, but you chose to repair me instead of obtain a new model. I think it must be unpleasant to lose what is yours. I am sorry," A graceful pause, and the way she looks at Vanessa in a better world might probably be some kind of crime, as soft as it is allowing. "It is bad to lose things," Brooke says, "I am sorry you lost your data."  
  
"It's your data," Vanessa corrects, instinctively.  
  
"Yes," Brooke agrees, looking at her curious. "So that means it is yours, like I am." She steps halfway close, an all too casual, all too familiar gesture. Waiting to see if Vanessa is alright with touch as comfort.  
  
To hug Brooke, right now, just hold her and pretend the last few days never happened, that's a temptation so fierce it hurts. To hug Brooke right now, knowing what has happened over the last few days, that hurts far too much.  
  
Cowards, all of them, including her.  
  
"I'm fine," Vanessa says blandly, stepping back. "So are you. We're all good."  
  
"Okay," Brooke says, and makes breakfast. It's perfectly toasted, light rye with avocado.

 

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
  
There are two sides to every story, this is Nina's. When she was a little girl, she loved fairytales.  
  
She loved fairytales, she read every storybook, watched every disney film. She loved them and she believed them, that imagination is limitless, everyone has talent, that if you are determined you will always succeed, that everything is very simple and the badness is labelled with ominous background music, you always know when you've gone too far.  
  
Her imagination was limitless, and so was her talent. She was determined. She got her masters, her PhD, she fought her way up, did things that are not crimes yet only because no one bothers to legislate against what they think is impossible. She made people.  
  
In the real world, nothing is labelled and it's up to you to realise when you have gone too far. Preserving Brooke means shutting her down, not on standby, shut down for real. That's the appropriate terminology, if Brooke was still an experiment. She's a person, so the rough translation is this: if she wants to save Brooke, she needs to do something that will probably kill her.  
  
When Nina was a very little girl, she loved fairytales, and they taught her that if you love something enough it is possible that they are, quite simply, not allowed to die.  
  
She holds on to that childish faith and does what she has decided she has to do.

 

  
  
*

 

 

  
They need to go home, because even Yvie's money runs out sometimes. They need to go back home, except that means deciding, really deciding, what the future is going to look like, so they all put it off.  
  
Yvie yells at someone on the phone a while. She says "fuck you bitch, I'm alive, so fuck off" as much as she says "I love you too, shut up", so probably it's family, probably it's none of their business.  
  
A'keria insists that all the rest of them need practice, and buys make-up in every shade under the sun, hair dye to change Plastique's to something more natural. Pulls all the mirrors off the walls and clusters them in the living room, so they can see from multiple angles. She makes them watch a lot of television.  
  
"You and Yvie are very helpful," A'keria says politely, "but they need to see normal people too." Then she switches on The Bachelor, and Yvie actually tries to wrestle the remote away from her.  
  
She coaches each of her synth sisters but looks saddest when she has to coach Brooke, except for the time Brooke blinks a couple of times and points out that generally, synths don't have tattoos. Vanessa, whose shirt is buttoned up above the neck today, grabs at it anyway just for second.  
  
Brooke, even if she doesn't know who she is, is still Brooke. She loves her sisters to distraction and plays at being a canvas very gentle, just to watch them draw on her, smiling the entire time. At her wrist there are flowers, that's Mercedes. On her fingers there are little experiments, Plastique being brave, Scarlet carefree and A'keria, with a glance, wanting her say. Little dark crosses and marks. The way she moved her hands before was enough of a danger, this is ridiculous.  
  
Vanessa is usually very good. Usually, she doesn't get distracted by Brooke's hands, the way they move, or by her mouth. The way that it is. Usually.  
  
Dammit. No. She has important things to do.  
  
"I don't know, I guess copy me," Vanessa says, very carefully looking only into Brooke's eyes, which are steel-grey today. "Bitch, I'm interesting."  
  
"I'm interesting," Brooke repeats, lowering her voice a couple of octaves, and Vanessa laughs out loud.

"Shut up!" she says, "I don't sound like that, shut up."  
  
Brooke raises one eyebrow.  
  
"Okay, don't copy me," Vanessa says, "just watch and take bits you like. It all helps."  
  
"Yes, Vanjie," Brooke says, "I will."  
  
And that's when it hits, and hurts worst, because that's when she realises that for the last minute and a half, she forgot. She forgot this wasn't Brooke. Not her Brooke.

 

 

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
Sometimes, Vanessa gets distracted by Brooke's hands, the way they move, or by her mouth. She really is working on it.  
  
"You're even worse far gone than when I first met you," Yvie tells her, in a private moment. "And when I met you it was disgustingly cute, how head over heels you were. Give me one good reason why you and her is such a big secret."  
  
Yvie never owned anyone. She had the money to, she had the background enough for it to be available and a normalised curiousity. But she's twenty four, and she never did. If nothing else, that's all Vanessa needs to know about her.  
  
"Brooke's doing what she did back when I woke her," Vanessa says. "She's figuring out what the first thing she said means. Name, hello, I'm yours." Vanessa tries to find the words. "She made me breakfast every day since Plastique mentioned that she did it once before. She's making a list, I know she is. Tasks that she's expected to do, because she belongs to me. She's making a damn list from everything we say."  
  
"If anyone," Vanessa says, dangerously, "ever hints that lo-" she stops, breathes deep. "That behaving a certain way to me is on that list, that it's a task that is expected-"  
  
Yvie nods. She gets it.  
  
"I'll do a fucking murder," Vanessa tells her helplessly, "I will. All of you be quiet."  
  
"Yeah," Yvie says.  
  
It is one whole and entire good reason.  
  
"Can I maybe hug you now?" Yvie asks, just in case, and hugs Vanessa something fierce.

 

 

  
  
*

 

 

SweetAsShuga: you really want me to release that video?  
  
GoBigBeKind: yes  
  
SweetAsShuga: you are fucking crazy. how did you even record this?  
  
GoBigBeKind: i am a scientist. we record what we do.  
  
SweetAsShuga: you really want me to release that video?  
  
GoBigBeKind: yes  
  
SweetAsShuga: you're a fucking idiot they will never let you alone  
  
GoBigBeKind: it's just science  
  
SweetAsShuga: no it isn't. it's not an experiment, you love them too much. I know because of the dumbass shit you just asked me to do.  
  
SweetAsShuga: done. and shut the fuck up, I love your babies too

 

  
  
  
*

 

 

  
  
Vanessa wakes restless one night for no reason, or at least for no reason she knows of yet. Downstairs, getting a glass of water, she realises that Brooke is not plugged in and charging anymore.  
  
She runs after the open door to their hotel. Sends a single text to A'keria; _we're out walking_. Nothing central, from Rosenborg up to the Kastellet, is far away from the sea, and she follows Brooke to the edge.  
  
"Brooke," Vanessa says out loud. "It's four in the morning. Come back with me."  
  
"It wasn't a memory," Brooke tells her obediently, taking her hand. "It wasn't real. I do not have any data before Copenhagen. But I was charging and there was-" she stops. "It was fractured. Distorted. But it felt true. It wasn't real but it was true, I don't like that."  
  
"I think we call that dreaming," Vanessa tells her, helpless. Brooke is still holding her hand.  
  
"Yes," Brooke says.  
  
"I dreamed I was on a beach," Brooke says, "and I wanted to kiss you."  
  
She starts walking off, and Vanessa follows, despite all sensible warnings.  
  
"Brooke-" she says. "Brooke, where are we-"  
  
The coast, and any kind, that becomes apparent. Nothing within København K is far, but... well, it's a beach. It's rockier than it is sandy, and if you swim out far enough to enjoy yourself, you'll probably cross shipping lanes. Whatever.  
  
Vanessa walks there, because Brooke does and Brooke is holding her hand.  
  
"I was on a beach and I wanted to kiss you," Brooke says. "Now I am. So, it is a true memory."  
  
"Oh," Vanessa says quiet. What else can she say?  
  
Brooke traces Vanessa's cheekbones lightly. "Do you want to kiss me, Vanjie?"

 


	14. love (love is a verb, love is a doing word)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have to go home, real life has to begin at some point. Vanessa has no idea what that looks like, or what she's going to face - what any of them are going to have to face or how to deal with it. None of them do. Glancing around, all they really can be certain of is who is going to be there to face it with them.

  
  
Vanessa kisses Brooke for the first time on a beach, and does it twice. Of the two of them, she is the only one who remembers both, but if you asked her to compare them she'd just stare back at you and ask what the fuck you were talking about.  
  
Kissing Brooke, whether it's the first, third, or twenty-and-whatever time, is the same. Soft, a little bit dangerous, and very important.  
  
Vanessa swipes them back into the hotel and they reach the room about the same time that the sun is rising, and what they find is five very concerned sisters, scattered across the suite, panicking.  
  
Brooke and Vanessa are holding hands as they enter. Everyone stares at that, silent, except for A'keria.  
  
A'keria ignores it, walks right up until she's staring Vanessa in the eyes.  
  
"Next time you intend to be gone that long," she says firmly, "send more than one text." Then she looks across to Brooke. "Are you more whole now?"  
  
Oh. Wow.  
  
"I think so," Brooke says to A'keria, "I know I am still learning."  
  
"Yes," A'keria says, glancing at Vanessa. "And so does she." There's something about the way she says it makes Vanessa think Yvie might have let a few things slip, or at least put in a good word for her. That's okay, whatever happened. If it had been A'keria who had asked, she'd have been equally honest about her doubts, and why she was keeping quiet. As long as neither of them ever say a fucking word to Brooke, she's fine.  
  
"You made a good choice," A'keria says to Brooke, casual.  
  
Brooke smiles like the sun rising, and yeah, oh, wow. It's a blessing, from family. Apart from the most important thing - Brooke's intent, freely given - it's the only thing Vanessa ever really wanted.  
  
She's kind of traditional like that.

  
  
  
  
  
*

 

  
They have to go home, real life has to begin at some point. Vanessa has no idea what that looks like, or what she's going to face - what any of them are going to have to face or how to deal with it. None of them do. Glancing around, all they really can be certain of is who is going to be there to face it with them. Maybe that's why Yvie looks so hesitant, so apologetic when she books all the tickets then says that she won't be flying back on the same day. "It's my mom," she says, "she's right th- she's close, and I didn't tell her anything, I won't. I won't say and I'll be back with you soon. I just want her to know I'm okay. Does that make any kind of sense?"  
  
"I am interested in Switzerland, I will go with Yvie," Scarlet declares, perched on the couch and not anywhere even close to apologetic. Yvie stares, but she's the only one surprised. "I do not care if it makes sense."  
  
It does make sense, and they all understand.  
  
The synths among them put on make-up again for immigration, they all pair off and take the flights a little nervous, but no one knows. Maybe being nervous helps, even. God knows machines are not supposed to do that. "Affection and anxiety," Plastique jokes, while Brooke fusses with her hair, upset that they are going to be separated. "Well, if we can do that I guess we did it. The human condition."  
  
"Yes," Brooke says, her hand on Plastique's cheek. "I am doing both. I am scared because we will be apart for ten hours. And I also love you."  
  
Plastique glances at Vanessa, a little helpless, but Vanessa doesn't have an answer either. Brooke just says these things sometimes, like she's just realising them. Maybe she is.  
  
"I'll see you back home," Plastique promises her, "We'll meet each other at LAX, and we'll laugh about how silly worrying was."  
  
They go home, because real life is still happening. Brooke flies with Vanessa, and holds her hand the entire time. They go home, and Vanessa has no idea if her house is still a crime scene, so she turns up at Silky's door, ready to apologise for days.  
  
"I know I have a lot to explain-" she says, before she even says hello, and stops only because she is wrapped up in Silky's arms first while Brooke is mildly assaulted by Ruby's enthusiastic attempts to lick her face. Brooke drops to her knees and ends up with an armful of excited canine, petting behind her ears and hugging with equal enthusiam.  
  
"Nah, you don't," Silky tells her, ignoring all of that. "I figured it out, bitch. You and Miss High and Mighty, Miss Shuga herself, huh? No wonder you were acting weird. You were helping her find out all the shit she told the world. I watch fucking CNN."  
  
It is close enough to true, and Vanessa is just so glad to be home.  
  
"Something like that," she says, hugging Silky back. "It was some weird shit like that."  
  
"She saved the best until last though," Silky says, gesturing them both in. "That synth thing."  
  
Vanessa freezes. She's been on a plane for more than ten hours, she hasn't checked the news.  
  
"The _what_ thing?"

 

  
*

 

  
  
  
The video is the last thing leaked, and honestly, the quality is terrible. The audio is shot to hell and the camera catches nothing much important, misses the face, you can't even tell who it is on the table, broken open from collarbone to waist, lights flashing from the inside so you know it is a synth.  
  
Vanessa almost has a fucking heart attack, but the the audio is shot to hell, so you'd never recognise Brooke's voice, although since the camera was pinned to her dress you may recognise Nina's.

  
  
_"Nina? I got to live. I know I wasn't supposed to but I did. Everything now is okay, Nina."_  
  
_"I don't think the people that love you agree, and I barely dare count myself among them, after what I have done to you."_  
  
_"You can give them something like me. Better, every time. I know. Do that. It's okay, I was so happy, Nina."_

  
  
The internet goes wild. Doctor West has been missing for months, but now there are theories. She made real, true AI and it killed someone so they ran. She made real, true AI and they fell in love so they ran. She made real, true AI because that's what she's been the whole time, also they ran. Interpol have to shut down on reports of seeing her because they're getting hundreds of calls a day, and at least two extremist groups claim they bought the technology and are quickly debunked.  
  
Nina turns up at an embassy in Bahrain, where they do not have an extradition treaty, but they do have a very nice lobby. It's got fruit in gilded bowls, flowers, all of that. It's very nice.  
  
She avoids the camera, and in a written statement, calls a press conference for Tuesday.  
  
The internet goes wild.

  
*

 

  
  
  
Back home, and on Silky's couch like she did when she was a teenager, Vanessa starts to dare think about it. The days a bit past tomorrow, and what they might look like.  
  
"She knows me too well," Vanessa says absently, not realising she's holding Brooke's hand. "She knows me inside out. She'll work it out, beca- oh, fuck." She grabs her hands together and sighs, glancing at Brooke. "See? She'll know if we stay with her."  
  
"Do you know her inside too?" Brooke asks, innocently, and Vanessa can only wince slightly, but also nod.  
  
"Okay," Brooke says. "So you know already, what she will do, when she finds out."  
  
It's true. Vanessa can only nod, and they move in with Silky the next day, while cops are still crawling all over Vanessa's apartment and the bullet holes there and finding nothing.  
  
It takes about forty-five hours for her to realise, if you're being specific about it. Silky watches Brooke catch at Vanessa's hand to steady her when she's getting dressed for a job interview in new heels, sees the look they share, and goes back and replays that video on youtube about eight times.  
  
Brooke enters quietly, after playback number seven, and when Vanessa has gone out for the interview.  
  
"I got to live," Brooke says quiet, gracefully dropping to one knee and taking Silky's hands as she echoes the video perfectly. Silky just stares. "I wasn't supposed to but I did. Then I died for an hour, they tell me. But I liked living. I like making Vanessa smile. I know you are important to her. Do you object?"  
  
"Shut up," Silky says instinctively, but also; "object to what?"  
  
"To me," Brooke says, "to anything about me." She glances across at the open youtube video, replaying itself. "Anything about that."  
  
It's a fucking lot to process, and maybe Brooke is a machine, okay, but anything that is just a machine doesn't ask questions like that. Silky readjusts her worldview accordingly, and at short notice. It's easy because she kind of suspected, and also it's easy because that's how much she cares for the things Vanessa cares about.  
  
"No," Silky says firmly, "Not right now, anyway- are there any more surpises waiting?"  
  
"I have sisters," Brooke tells her solemnly.  
  
"Of course you do," Silky says, "I am going to kick Vanjie's ass, the very minute she gets home. I thought the dog was too much- fucking hell, Vanessa."  
  
Vanessa comes home and finds them both on their knees, trying to rewire the charging port in the spare room where Vanessa sleeps, so Brooke can be close to her. Brooke just smiles, tucking her hair back and calm about it, but Silky looks ready to give her exactly as much hell as she deserves.  
  
"Oh," Vanessa says weakly. "I told you I had a lot to explain."  
  
"Bitch," Silky says, "You really do."

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
Vanessa's house isn't a crime scene forever, if only because time fixes most things, and it seems that with their entire everything collapsing around them in real time anyone left at the company that knows about the... well, the synth situation... has bigger things to worry about. Things like the sanctity of their offshore accounts, and avoiding jail time.  
  
"This feels weird," Vanessa says, walking through the door, then looking back at Brooke. "Do we just- how are we supposed to just do this? Go back to, I don't know, breakfast and groceries and dumbass-"  
  
Brooke tilts her head, and catches Vanessa's hand. "I will unpack the bags," she says helpfully, then glances at the kitchen wall, the holes left in it. "Then tomorrow you can buy some paint. Do you have plaster?"  
  
"No," Vanessa points out. "And neither of us know how to do that."  
  
"I can download-"  
  
Vanessa cuts her off by dropping the bags she is hold and just wrapping her arms around her, ducking her head and pressing close. "Not what I meant," she mumbles.  
  
"I know," Brooke says soft.  
  
She does know. A'keria has moved in with Silky until she feels secure enough to attempt signing her own lease. Plastique and Mercedes share their time between the houses; Plastique getting better every day at walking out and being seen nothing more remarkable than a very pretty girl, and Mercedes very, very slowly learning how to lie. Kind of. A little bit. She's making great progress. Brooke still gets antsy when she's out of sight for too long.  
  
Yvie gets back too, and comes over to hug Vanessa about it, and meet Silky. Unfortunately.  
  
"I don't like her, why does she know," Yvie complains as Vanessa drags her out of the living room to avoid all-out war. The fact that she's complaining rather than throwing punches means she's already accepted it as okay, she's just being stubborn.  
  
"She's my fucking sister, okay," Vanessa says, "I get those too."  
  
Yvie sighs, and hugs Vanessa quickly. "Yeah. Fuck it. Fine. Hey, Scarlet, she's-"  
  
"Moved in?"  
  
"Yup," Yvie says, a bit wide eyed. "Into my house. Just did it."  
  
"You are the only one who is surprised," Vanessa informs her, patting Yvie's cheek. "Is it a problem?"  
  
"No," Yvie admits. "I kinda mostly came over to get the dog, to be honest."

  
  
*

 

  
  
  
"Doctor West, the synth in the footage, do you think she could feel?"  
  
"Did you make a real one?"  
  
"Was she dying?"  
  
"Stop," Nina says, composed but firm, and they're all so on edge enough that they do. Damn. "You," she says, pointing. "What is your name, Miss?"  
  
"Ariel," the girl says, clutching her press pass.  
  
"Ariel," Nina says, "what's your question?"  
  
Ariel did not expect this, at all. "What was her name?" she blurts out, just because.  
  
Nina actually smiles.  
  
"She had one, it was hers." Nina says. "And I will decline to comment further only out of respect. But that's a good question, Ariel."  
  
"What do you say," another journalist says, pushing past, "about the charges against you?"  
  
"Which ones?" Nina asks, one eyebrow raised, "The headlines accusing me of doing something no one ever bothered to make illegal, or the litigation regarding whether I am infringing on my employer's physical and intellectual property? Because I am confident about the latter, and not just because I have good lawyers, although I do."  
  
"I am confident," Nina says quiet, "because people are not property. That's not my opinion, that's constitutional. And not that it should matter, but while she existed, she learned, and she loved and fell in love, she was loved back, and she died so someone she loved wouldn't- I shut her down myself. Most of us don't manage to be that much of a person in thirty fucking years, let alone three months. So yes. I'm confident."  
  
The cameras go wild and the questions echo over each other, and Nina ignores all of them. She does have good lawyers, and she knows who to call on.  
  
"Was she the only one?"  
  
"I am absolutely certain," Nina says, not really lying at all, "that she was unique." They all were. That was the point.  
  
"You're not going to win this battle easy," someone comments in the back, one of the weathered NYT reporters, who no longer gives shit.  
  
"I know," Nina says charmingly, "that's why I picked such a nice embassy."  
  
"Will you make more?"  
  
"No," Nina says, "not unless I have assurances about protection."  
  
"Ah," some shark says, someone thinking they're clever, "So we do need protecting from them?"  
  
"Ma'am, you missed my point entirely," Nina says, making that polite word still have all the feeling of a few other four-letter ones, "No. But they do need protecting from us. If I didn't learn anything else, I learned that, and I should have worked it out sooner."  
  
She hopes they are watching, and that they know she means it. It's a hell of a fight, and by all sensible accounts an impossible one. But that's okay. She's still going to fight it. In fact, it's her home ground, where she's most comfortable.  
  
As Mark Twain once said, truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth is not.  
  
Well. If her track record is anything to go by, neither is Nina.

  
  
*

  
  
  
Silky and A'keria get on, which is terrifying. None of them ever presume to know what it is exactly that Scarlet feels, or intends to do, but they don't assume to know what Yvie will do either, so it works. Plastique is curious about the world but has no intention of orbiting very far from Brooke, and Mercedes is taking her time. She's got all the time in the world, because they all adore her, and will make sure of it. Vanessa and Brooke are- well, they are.  
  
If it started in any one place, it might have started with that. Sometimes it is very simple. Sometimes it is also complicated, because there's a lot happening, in the world. A lot of debate. A lot of history, at a turning point.  
  
"Don't you want to see what they said?" Vanessa asks sleepy, trying to watch senate hearing on her phone and understand even half of it. "Don't you-"  
  
"No," Brooke says, pulling her close. "Maybe tomorrow. Not tonight."  
  
"It's important."  
  
"Yes," Brooke agrees, calm. "And it will still be that tomorrow."  
  
She curls herself around Vanessa, and Vanessa has no idea what it must be like, to have had to fight from the first moment you existed just to be allowed the space to be, and still find such peace in the quiet moments, in stillness.  
  
"Okay," she says, "but-"  
  
"No," Brooke says, firmly. "You need sleep. It is a biological imperative."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Yes," Brooke says, reaching over and taking the phone out of Vanessa's hand, and switching off the debate raging in public about whether things like her are even real, even people.  
  
"Ignore it," she says, "I do, because I have proof."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Yes," Brooke tells her. "You, here. With me."  
  
Oh. Oh, wow.  
  
"Read it in the morning," Brooke tells her, pressed close, very much there and very much real.  
  
Vanessa loves her. That has been true for a long time. Taking stock of what that means, and all the reasons she does - yeah, that's a whole moment. She hasn't got the words. When she thought Brooke was gone, her absence filled Vanessa's world. But she wasn't gone, just a little lost, and she's finding her way back more and more every day.  
  
"Vanjie?" Brooke asks almost grumpily, as Vanessa just stares at her, taking her in.  
  
"Yeah," Vanessa says, "I'm here."  
  
"Good." Brooke says, blinking once, reaching for her to hug close, and to sleep. Tonight, her eyes are the colour of the ocean.  
  
"Good," Vanessa agrees, folded into her arms.  
  
If the choice is between knowing what it is that she is going to have to face, or knowing exactly who it is that will be there to face it with her, Vanessa likes the one she got.  
  
It's pretty damn good.  
  
  
  



End file.
